I’VE SEEN PLAYERS CON FANS ON SOCIAL MEDIA... IT’S A DISGRACE

FOOTBALLERS and social media has been a hot topic this season and I’ve been annoyed about the generic chat for years. The ‘back strong’ tagline on my podcast all stems from these posts after games. ‘Fans were terrific, sorry for the bad performance today, back stronger next week.’ Do me a favour. I couldn’t stand it when I was playing and I cannot stand it now. There is no authenticity. It’s embarrassing.

I saw the clip of the Manchester United chief executive of media the other week, talking about monitoring fan sentiments online and working with the players on messaging. Honestly, what can you say to that? This is how it is now. The only reason I joined Twitter was to have a bit of a laugh. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t want to follow somebody’s social media manager. I’d rather not follow the big players who have someone behind them at the controls. What’s the point? There is so much good that comes from social media but the boring chat, the apologies, can get in the bin. And I watched players fool fans on a regular basis. At Stoke when we got relegated, there were players not pulling their weight at all. They weren’t even doing their laces up at training.

They’d then go home and post videos of themselves running upstairs with their personal trainers. I saw this happen first-hand. Supporters would point to these clips and ask why they weren’t being picked at a weekend. Well, I can give you some ideas if you want. What I saw were disgraceful attitudes and it wound me up to the point that I was glad that I retired when I did.