Premier League stars offered advice on how to avoid falling foul on Twitter

Posted Wednesday, August 08, 2012 by Dailymail

Footballers are being prepared for the new season with expert advice on avoiding the pitfalls of drugs, gambling and social networking.

FA disciplinary chiefs will have visited more than 60 professional clubs before the end of this month, focusing mainly on the perils of Twitter.

Rio Ferdinand and Emmanuel Frimpong are two Barclays Premier League players already caught up in the FA's new vigilant stance on tweeting.

The pair are charged with misconduct. Frimpong used an insulting term in reply to Tottenham fans and Ferdinand retweeted an offensive comment about Ashley Cole.

A player from the Women's Super League was banned for 70 days for racist abuse aimed at a rival on Twitter, even though the target gave evidence to insist it was only 'banter'.

An Isthmian League player was also fined last season for attaching the hash-tag phrase 'cheating b*****d' to a Tweet about the referee.

The FA have been anxious to remind players that Twitter is a public forum, 'banter' is best exchanged privately and that they are responsible for retweets because it is, in effect, republishing.

Advice to those who tweet in the heat of the moment is to 'delete and apologise' as soon as possible, although that does not avert disciplinary action.

Players have been especially reminded of the dangers of supplements after Barnet's Mark Marshall was banned for two years in May for testing positive for a substance consumed in a supplement called Jack3d.

This has proved to be more of a problem for clubs in the lower leagues because they cannot afford sports science departments to closely monitor players' diets.