Ashley Cole calls The FA “#BunchOfTwats” – 17k retweets
Chelsea left back and England international Ashley Cole tweeted this afternoon from his @TheRealAC3 – “Hahahahaa, well done #fa I lied did I, #BUNCHOFTWATS” following a FA judgement and publishing of findings from the recent John Terry case.
Cole tweeted out the offensive tweet at Friday lunchtime to his 382,000 Twitter followers and within it’s first hour attracted over 17,000 retweets – including many messages of disgust from former players and journalists.
UPDATE: Cole has since deleted the tweet but even though it was deleted just after 1 hour, it hasn’t stopped the story reaching major media.
Less than 3 months ago we reported a leaked document from The FA outlining the new Social Media guidelines and rules that would be enforced regarding bad behavior on Social Media.
The official document (which presumably Ashley Cole never read), states:
“Any comments which are improper, bring the game into disrepute or are threatening, abusive, indecent or insulting may lead to disciplinary action”
And just in case Cole thinks an apology on Twitter or deleting his tweet will help his chances at avoiding punishment, the rule list states:
“Deleting or apologizing publicly for an improper posting whilst advisable, will not prevent disciplinary action being taken”
Whilst most football players have been better behaved in the past 12 months, this is still a real problem and our advice that clubs should properly educate players about the consequences of bad social media – rather than just giving them rules – is still very relevant. Perhaps Ashley Cole will take a note out of Joey Barton’s book – who famously used Promoted Tweets as a way of apologizing to the wider audience for his tweets in a desperate attempt to claw back some PR credibility?
