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Karen Carney has deleted her Twitter profile after suffering a barrage of abuse from online trolls over her comments about Leeds United.
And the Premier League club have been urged to delete their post amid accusations it ‘enabled’ fans to send vile messages to the pundit.
Leeds posted a video on Twitter of the former England Lioness’ comments about the club during an appearance as a pundit for Amazon Prime’s Premier League coverage.
Carney remarked her belief that the Whites were ‘promoted because of COVID’, saying their charge to the Championship title was aided by the break in action, having suffered an almighty collapse the season before.
But Leeds took exception to her claims, and posted a section of her analysis online with a mocking message.
It led to Carney being subjected to abuse from fans and trolls on social media.
Days later, the former England international has now deleted her Twitter account.
The incident appears to have split public opinion. Many high profile names in the sport, including USA soccer star Megan Rapinoe, have voiced their support of Carney and criticism of Leeds’ actions, while plenty others have insisted Leeds have done nothing wrong.
Leeds owner Andrea Radrizzani had initially defended the club’s post and ‘took responsibility’ for it, but has now apologised to Carney for the abuse she has suffered as a result.
Radrizzani said: “I’m very sorry Karen was abused on social media. I wanted to defend my club and our players from a comment, which I felt was harsh from Karen on air.
“Our tweet wasn’t offensive – simply stating that we won the league by ten points. We honestly didn’t expect such a reaction and we are sorry she experienced that.
“I respect her as a person and a pundit and I hope she understands that we just want to defend our club, we are a family.
“I hope the abuse stops and we can move forward and I hope Karen will be our guest at Elland Road soon – I’d like to meet personally with her.”
Host Tony Cascarino admitted on Friday’s talkSPORT Breakfast that he didn’t agree with Carney’s comments about Leeds, either.
But he certainly doesn’t think the pundit sharing her opinion warranted the abuse she received.
“I didn’t agree with Karen’s comments about Leeds, but I don’t get how people could get so offended and so offensive towards her,” said the former Chelsea and Republic of Ireland striker.
“It’s her opinion and she backed it up with a valid argument.
“She’s there to give an opinion and if you stop giving opinions you won’t be in the industry for very long.”
The original post is still live on Leeds’ Twitter page despite calls for it to be removed, with former defender Rio Ferdinand among those urging the club to delete it.
talkSPORT host Max Rushden believes the incident is a lesson for social media users to ‘be kind’ online, admitting he has been subjected to vile messages throughout his career as a broadcaster.
Rushden said: “I think this is a lesson for everyone. It’s not hard to be nice, is it? It’s not hard, just try to be decent!
“Who am I to preach? I’m not, I’m just the same as everyone else and with social media, it’s only about ten years old and we’re still learning.
“All I can say is I’ve had death threats. They’re more like ‘I wish you were dead’ rather than ‘I’m going to kill you’, but I’ve still had them, people saying ‘I hope you get a terminal illness’ and stuff like that.
“It doesn’t really bother me, because it never comes from a high achiever, does it.
“But if you get 30 messages it can feel like an avalanche. It doesn’t take that many to feel like the world is against you and make you feel nervous about checking it.
“We all post things quickly, we can all feel angry about something.
“I tweeted something yesterday about Boris Johnson’s dad applying for French citizenship after Brexit, I said it was ridiculous and beyond parody, but I deleted it afterwards.
“I think if you posted that message with the Karen Carney video, even if you’ve done it in a way that was not sexist and wasn’t abusive, it has enabled so much abuse so it might just be easier to take it down.”
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