Social media has long been viewed as an opportunity for football stars to humanise themselves and communicate with fans - except a lot of the time it's not the footballers themselves behind it.
That notion was exposed again on Saturday when Man United's Marcus Rashford bid farewell to the departing David de Gea. In a post clearly meant for management team, the striker's Instagram account posted a picture of himself and the keeper with the words : "Caption ideas: You were here from my breakthrough, good luck with your next step, brother."
It's not the first time that Rashford, 25, has erred in such fashion. He's previously posted off his own accounts with a message clearly designed to be sent in private, but he certainly isn't the only footballer to be caught out either with very few actually taking charge of their own uploads.
Foden throws down the gauntlet to Mbappe
Or so we thought. After Manchester City set up a mouth-watering Champions League final with PSG in 2020/21, Foden's Twitter account wrote: "@KMbappe are you ready?" and added a handshake emoji.
It turns out it was Ten Toe, the company who were running his Twitter account, that sent the message, and the players and his representatives were left furious. The post was deleted and the company was sacked by Foden, but not before his 500,000-plus followers and seen it.
Anichebe forgets he's logged in
The forward was an unused substitute as Sunderland lost to West Ham late on back in 2016, but he wanted fans to stay positive. So he messaged his social media manger with: "Can you tweet something like… Unbelievable support yesterday and great effort by the lads! Hard result to take! But we go again!”
His manager duly obliged by copying and pasting the demand - word for word.
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Hart's not in it
Tottenham suffered a shock Europa League exit to Dinamo Zagreb back in March 2021, but Joe Hart's social media team clearly didn't think so. Shortly after the 3-0 loss, Hart posted "Job done" alongside a Spurs graphic on his Instagram story.
It was later removed and the goalkeeper apologised, saying: "Someone thought that we had won 3-0 last night. As sloppy as it sounds, it is the truth. Posting ‘job done’ - that’s unacceptable."
Lescott's car crash of a tweet
Ok, so after Joleon Lescott responded to a 6-0 defeat by Liverpool - and a barrage of criticism - by posting a picture of his expensive Mercedes, he didn't go down the usual route of blaming his social media team.
He took responsibility, sort of, by dubiously claiming: "The tweet sent out from my account involving a picture of a car was totally accidental it happened whilst driving and my phone was in my pocket."
OK, Joleon. OK.
