Twitter releases statement defending Premier League players from racist abuse

Twitter have released a statement saying that they have taken action against more than 700 examples of "hateful conduct" during the last two weeks, with there being plenty of racist abuse aimed at Premier League players.

Some of the players that had racist abuse targeted at them include Manchester United duo Paul Pogba and Marcus Rashford, as well as Chelsea teammates Tammy Abraham and Kurt Zouma, even though the season started just four weeks ago.

Twitter stated that it met with clubs that were "directly affected", the Professional Footballers' Association, as well as the Kick it Out campaign, in a bid to try an "tackle the issue collectively".

Apart from this, Twitter also added that it will "continue to take swift action" as such "vile content has no place on our service."

The social media network also said that "In the past two weeks, we have taken action on more than 700 examples of abuse and hateful conduct related to UK football."

Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, as well as Chelsea manager Frank Lampard, have been a few of those that have been calling for social media companies to handle the situation in a better manner, with both sets of players falling victim to racial abuse.

After meeting with Twitter, Kick it Out said that it had agreed to take certain steps with Twitter to remove such hateful conduct, saying "Kick it Out met with Twitter last week to discuss a number of continuing issues on their platform, relating to football - including the abuse of professional players, the wider scale of online abuse, reporting procedures and legal enforcement of online hate crime."