'Negative - Crawley Town boss has his say on social media following Manchester United and Everton stars' posts

In the last week, Jadon Sancho posted to describe feeling like a ‘scapegoat’ at Manchester United, which was viewed as a criticism of manager Erik ten Hag.

Demarai Gray also came under fire for an Instagram post appearing to question the decision-making of Everton manager Sean Dyche.

The post read: "Everton fans have always been great with me but it's so difficult to play for someone who don't show you respect as a person.”

With the use of social media becoming a timely topic as players seem to have more power than ever in the transfer market, Lindsey was critical of how it is used in general.

“Some people use it from a positive angle, but I would dare say that it’s used 95 per cent of the time as a negative,” Lindsey said.

“People want to jump on when mistakes are made, people want to jump on being negative about things more so than positive.

“My advice would be don’t go on it. I just don’t see it benefiting anybody.”

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Studies on social media abuse have found football to be a highly affected industry, with the example of racist abuse after the Euro 2020 Final being a point of heightened awareness.

An amended ‘Online Safety Bill’ was drawn up in 2022 by the UK government that included making online hate crime a priority illegal offence, but this bill is still in the final stages of approval.

In the meantime, many footballers continue to face abuse, which Lindsey said needs to stop.

“It’s like anything. When a team wins a game, plays really well and scores lots of goals, I would dare say that the comments are probably good, but not many of them,” he said.

“But when the team doesn’t play well and they lose and it’s awful, I bet you get 20 times the amount of comments.

“It’s kind of a negative platform.”

While football has taken action to highlight the online issues it faces – including a boycott of all platforms by Premier League clubs and players in May 2021 – it remains out of the industry’s control to punish abuse.

For as long as that remains the case, there is little the likes of Crawley and Lindsey can do other than continue to call out poor behaviour.

One way to avoid the discourse, of course, is to dodge the platforms entirely.

Lindsey said: “I don’t know whether it’s Twitter or something else these days [where abuse happens]. I’m kind of old school, I read a newspaper from the shop.

“To me, I don’t really give my players any advice on it because I’m not up-to-date with it myself, I think it’s a negative thing and I’d stay well clear.”