Thread by @thetimes

Vanilla, sanitised messages. Apologies that don’t come across sincerely. Whole teams posting almost scripted, identically-worded tweets

Managed social media posts are undermining players and deceiving fans | ✍️ Gary Neville (@GNev2) thetimes.co.uk/article/gary-n…

It’s been obvious for some time that there’s been some social media orchestration going on in football

But it was only listening to Phil Lynch, head of Manchester United’s media channels, this week that I understood just how ridiculous this has become

A player at Old Trafford is now given a bespoke dossier of “fan sentiment graphs”, algorithms and analytics to work out if he should say sorry for having a shocker on a Saturday afternoon

It pretends to help players while doing precisely the opposite. We want footballers to take responsibility, but it treats them like fools

I want our footballers to communicate

Social media attracts a lot of negative coverage — and undoubtedly those in charge need to do much more to stamp down on the worst abuse — but I still believe in the upsides

There are lots of successful ways of running a social account

Take the Gallagher brothers. Noel’s Twitter (@NoelGallagher) makes clear that it’s run by his label. It’s about album releases

Liam’s is, well, Liam (@liamgallagher). It’s unvarnished. It’s raw

It’s definitely him

What matters is that it’s clear which style is which

What we have with footballers is them wanting to have their cake and eat it — proclaiming it to be authentic when it is their management team’s words

There is a place for media advice, and social media teams and managers. I have people who help me with my output, whether that is putting out messages with my podcasts or my LinkedIn

But it must be done right

Let’s say you’ve lost a game of football

I think players would be better off posting a quick selfie-video than some long-winded apology that has obviously been written for them, or a clichéd tweet about “going again”

But some of these tweets and posts are diversion tactics. You feel manipulated reading them and this is meant to be football, not some Putin-esque plot to control the narrative

I do believe in our footballers

Through development, learning and independent thinking they can become leaders and communicators

But what we are seeing undermines them and endangers that growth
thetimes.co.uk/article/gary-n…