Unfortunately, online abuse and hateful social media posts are just a part of modern day society for most of us, but especially so for anyone in the public eye. Therefore, as another Premier League season has now drawn to a close, the sports content specialists at Half Time Content analysed social listening data to discover how Football fans have felt about the League’s top players this season, and which have been on the wrong end of the most hate posts.
Using social listening data and natural language processing, we analysed social media posts about all of the Premier League’s top players this season for the dates between and including August 18th to May 19th. From these posts, we then collected the volume of posts about each player that had an emotion of either “anger” or “disgust”, to work out which players had the most hate directed at them this season.
Marcus Rashford Received The Most Online Abuse This Season
Player | Club | Hate Posts | % of Overall Posts |
Marcus Rashford | Man Utd | 707,160 | 27% |
Mohamed Salah | Liverpool | 382,140 | 16% |
Bukayo Saka | Arsenal | 368,300 | 17% |
Kai Havertz | Arsenal | 354,940 | 19% |
Erling Haaland | Man City | 293,800 | 13% |
Alejandro Garnacho | Man Utd | 261,380 | 19% |
Harry Maguire | Man Utd | 242,200 | 24% |
Casemiro | Man Utd | 240,480 | 23% |
André Onana | Man Utd | 213,640 | 22% |
Scott McTominay | Man Utd | 193,400 | 25% |
Coming in first place by a pretty significant distance is Marcus Rashford. The Manchester United Forward received over 700,000 hate posts this season with an “anger” or “disgust” emotion. That amounts to 27% of the overall posts about him, the highest percentage of any player in the top 10.
Furthermore, of the total number of hate posts aimed at all of the players in the top ten combined, 28% were directed at Rashford.
Rashford received almost double the amount of abusive posts of the next most hated player - Mo Salah. Liverpool’s top scorer this season received over 380,000 hate posts, nearly five times as many as the next most abused Liverpool player, Cody Gakpo.
Rounding off the rest of the top five are Arsenal duo Bukayo Saka and Kai Havertz, along with Golden Boot winner Erling Haaland.
The rest of the top ten is then capped off with five more Man Utd players - Garnacho, Maguire, Casemiro, Onana and McTominay. In total six of the top ten play for the red side of Manchester.
Of the players in the top 10, the five with the highest percentage of posts that are abusive are all Man Utd players:
Marcus Rashford - 27%
Scott McTominay - 25%
Harry Maguire - 24%
Casemiro - 23%
Andre Onana - 22%
The Players with the Highest Percentage of Abusive Posts
Player | Club | Hate Posts | % of Overall Posts |
Christian Eriksen | Man Utd | 75,280 | 29% |
Oleksandr Zinchenko | Arsenal | 130,180 | 28% |
Diogo Dalot | Man Utd | 114,080 | 28% |
Ben Chilwell | Chelsea | 89,100 | 28% |
Marcus Rashford | Man Utd | 707,160 | 27% |
Cody Gakpo | Liverpool | 78,020 | 27% |
Noni Madueke | Chelsea | 96,220 | 26% |
Levi Colwill | Chelsea | 70,540 | 26% |
Scott McTominay | Man Utd | 193,400 | 25% |
Harry Maguire | Man Utd | 242,200 | 24% |
It’s not much better news for Man Utd players when looking at the players with the highest percentage of hate posts during the course of this season’s Premier League.
From the players that had more than 40,000 abusive posts about them (57 players in total), Christian Eriksen had the highest percentage with an “anger” or “disgust” emotion at 29% of all posts.
Not far behind tied in second place are a trio of full backs - Oleksandr Zinchenko, Diogo Dalot and Ben Chilwell, all with 28% of their posts tied to hate filled emotions.
From the top 10, five are Man Utd players - Eriksen, Dalot, Rashford, McTominay and Maguire.
The Most Abused Teams in the Premier League This Season
Team | Average Number of Hate Posts per Player | Average Percentage of Hate Posts | Most Abused Player |
Man Utd | 130,474 | 19% | Marcus Rashford |
Arsenal | 100,489 | 14% | Bukayo Saka |
Man City | 55,856 | 13% | Erling Haaland |
Liverpool | 47,508 | 13% | Mo Salah |
Chelsea | 46,679 | 12% | Cole Palmer |
Perhaps unsurprisingly given the amount of players in the top 10 most abused players, Man Utd also have the highest average number of hate posts per player. Each player received over 130,000 abusive posts on average. They also have the highest percentage of hate posts per player at 19%.
Arsenal rank in second with 100,000 hate posts per player, well ahead of the rest of the top five clubs - Man City, Liverpool and Chelsea.
Man Utd also have the most players in the top 50 most abused players on social media - a whopping 16 players in total.
The Players with the Most Positive Posts This Season
Player | Club | Positive Posts | Positive % | Negative % |
Cole Palmer | Chelsea | 521,480 | 22% | 8% |
Bukayo Saka | Arsenal | 467,140 | 17% | 15% |
Erling Haaland | Man City | 448,880 | 16% | 12% |
Kai Havertz | Arsenal | 410,560 | 17% | 19% |
Mohamed Salah | Liverpool | 400,760 | 13% | 15% |
Kobbie Mainoo | Man Utd | 305,460 | 22% | 4% |
Alejandro Garnacho | Man Utd | 277,560 | 16% | 18% |
Marcus Rashford | Man Utd | 255,820 | 8% | 28% |
Declan Rice | Arsenal | 243,580 | 20% | 11% |
Kevin De Bruyne | Man City | 224,600 | 13% | 16% |
Social media isn’t all doom and gloom however. Topping the list of players with the most posts about them with a positive sentiment is the league's Young Player of the Year, Cole Palmer. 22% of the posts analysed about the breakout star had a positive sentiment compared to just 8% with a negative sentiment.
Arsenal have three players in the top 10 with Bukayo Saka the highest in second place. Erling Haaland, Kai Havertz and Mo Salah round off the top five.
There’s more positive news here for Man Utd players with Mainoo, Garnacho and Rashford all in the top 10, followed by Declan Rice and Kevin De Bruyne.
Despite being the most abused player and the one with the highest number of negative posts about him, Rashford still managed to garner plenty of positive views, albeit only 8% of the total posts about him, by far the lowest percentage in the top 10.
As well as the most overall positive posts, Palmer also has the joint highest percentage of positive posts, tied with Kobbie Mainoo. Mainoo however, has a lower percentage of negative posts at just 4%.
Methodology
Using social listening data and natural language processing, I collected the number of social media posts that had a positive or negative sentiment, as well as those with the emotion classed as “anger” or “disgust”, for the period of the 2023/24 Premier League season of August 18th to May 19th. Social media posts are collected via Brandwatch from various social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as online forums such as Reddit. Players that played at least 450 mins in the League this season were included in the study.
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