Johannesburg - Football is undoubtedly at the heart of Twitter, and in the midst of the summer transfers, fans have been quick to support their teams.
But the social media platform has also become a network used to display abuse and hatred towards teams and players.
And new research has revealed that Tottenham Hotspur received the most abuse on Twitter throughout the 22/23 season, with a score of 9.5/10.
The study was conducted by the experts at SeatPick, an Israeli event technology service who took to Twitter to carry out the research.
They analysed all tweets mentioning each 22/23 Premier League team’s main Twitter account. SeatPick then created a total score out of 10, by analysing swear words and negative tweets towards the team.
Other highlights from the research included that Leeds United received the second most hate on Twitter from teams in the Premier League, with a score of 8.6/10, with Everton ranking third with a score of 8.1/10.
Meanwhile, league winners Manchester City received the least amount of abuse on Twitter, with a score of 0.7/10, joint with Brentford.
SeatPick researchers explained that Tottenham Hotspur displayed poor form last season compared to previous ones. The research also took into consideration the comments surfacing around the players poor mentality and lack of squad depth, in addition to Antonio Conte’s shock departure from the club.
“Tottenham Hotspur has an average of 2.21 swear words per 100 comments, and over a quarter (27%) of all comments and posts were negative,” the researchers said.
With Leeds United being the second most abused English football team on the social media platform, the researchers believe that their relegation with a total of 31 points from the Premier League may have contributed to this.
“One in four Twitter comments regarding Leeds United were negative, along with an average of two swear words per 100 comments,” the researchers said.
Meanwhile, with Everton in third place, the researchers said that they narrowly missed out on relegation during the 22/23 season with a total of 36 points.
“With almost a quarter (23.5%) of comments being negative, and over 2000 swear words used throughout the season, it is no surprise that Everton places third in the data,” the researchers said.
Everton’s fierce Scouse rivals Liverpool placed 14th have an abuse score of 3.6/10, which is 4.5 lower than Everton’s score.
With Manchester City and Brentford having received the least amount of abuse on Twitter, the researchers said that Brentford had an average of 17.9% of negative comments compared to Manchester City with 18.2%.
“However, City does in fact have fewer swear words per 100 comments (0.7) compared to Brentford’s 0.8.”
In addition, City’s rivals Manchester United ranked seven for the most abuse on Twitter with a score of 6.2/10.