Man Utd red-cards players' Twitter and Facebook profiles

Man Utd - banned from the social internet
Man Utd - banned from the social internet

Manchester United has apparently put its foot-down over its players' social-networking habits and announced on its official website that no player in the team uses Facebook or Twitter.

While it was unlikely that any of the team actually maintained their own social-networking page anyway, according to EPL Talk all Twitter and Facebook pages pertaining to the team have now been deleted.

This comes after Man Utd's website issued a warning, explaining: "The club wishes to make it clear that no Manchester United players maintain personal profiles on social networking websites.

"Fans encountering any web pages purporting to be written by United players should treat them with extreme scepticism.

"Any official news relating to Manchester United or its players will be communicated via ManUtd.com."

Accounts deleted

EPL Talk does note, however, that some players did used to have Twitter and Facebook accounts – these have either been shut down or the contents removed.

This is in stark contrast to the likes of Sunderland player Darren Bent who went as far as getting his Twitter account name (@DBTheTruth) sewn into his boots.

At least he used his account to issue out a grovelling apology after his team faced a 7-2 drubbing at the hands of Chelsea at the weekend.

Some two hours after the game he posted: "...Bad day today feel sorry for any supporter who went today. We will bounce straight back I'm convinced. 150% commited [sic] to the cause."

A little digging has found that Rio Ferdinand does indeed still have a MySpace page but this seem to nothing but an advert for his business assets, so looks to be run by his management.

It will be interesting to see how many other football teams follow suit.

Marc Chacksfield

Marc Chacksfield is the Editor In Chief, Shortlist.com at DC Thomson. He started out life as a movie writer for numerous (now defunct) magazines and soon found himself online - editing a gaggle of gadget sites, including TechRadar, Digital Camera World and Tom's Guide UK. At Shortlist you'll find him mostly writing about movies and tech, so no change there then.