Footballers' social media gaffes: Oi! Stop scoring these own goals

The only thing we can be certain of is that Rajiv van La Parra almost certainly won't be among the front-runners, writes Pete Cashmore.

And on the evidence provided this week, he's not going to be troubling Mensa any time soon either.

Earlier this week, a couple of days after another woeful Wolves showing, this time against Huddersfield Town, van La Parra took to photo-sharing website Instagram to amend his profile blurb to 'One week they love you. Next week they hate you. Both weeks I got paid'. It was accompanied by a jaunty emoticon, and pictures of VLP living the high life of the modern footballer.

Rajiv has made several misjudgements in his innocent posting. Firstly, he made the fatal error of posting something on a public forum rather than just thinking it inside his head, where it can't hurt anybody. Secondly, he took the position that his pay cheque is of more importance than the feelings of the people whose turnstile money allows said cheque to be so fat. And thirdly, he revealed that he is of the grave misconception that Wolves fans have ever loved him – tolerating a player's chronic inconsistency, Rajiv, does not constitute love.

His defence was that it was a private joke. Rajiv van La Parra has nearly 9,000 instagram followers.

You can reasonably expect that Rajiv will be hauled over the coals for his silly words, but the fact is, Wolves, among many many other clubs, has been here before. Social media is really not a friend of the modern football club at all. What was supposed to be a valuable tool to allow fans to get closer to the players they idolise, frequently allows those players to spit in their idoliser's eye.

Mick McCarthy had it right, as he so often did, when he fingered social media as a pernicious influence in the modern game. He went so far as to call in a media law firm to educate his players at all levels about the dangers of slack posting. Kenny Jackett would do well to call up Mick and get them back in for a refresher course.

"Players are going to get themselves into trouble over Twitter, I can tell," said Mick with great prescience. "I can't ban it and I'm not going to try, but they have to be careful what they say on it about the club. If they put a team selection up, which I'm sure some disgruntled numpty will at some stage, they will be in trouble."

Nobody has gone so far as that, but the source of McCarthy's ire was a tweet-related incident that denied Wolves the service of a potential top signing. Greg Halford, a Wolves player on loan to Portsmouth in January 2011, had announced to the Twittersphere: "With Steve Sidwell in the stands, read what you like into that."

Sidwell got as far as a fitness test at Wolves, but with the news that he was available for transfer leaking out via Halford, Fulham jumped in and snatched him from under McCarthy's wonky nose. 'Some twit' was his subsequent assessment of Halford, who never played for the club again.

Jamie O'Hara was another Wolves player who didn't know when to think rather than post. Wolves fans were rather outraged when the £35,000-a-week under-achiever tweeted, "things were so much easier when I earned 100 pound a week on wts #stress" in 2012. His response to the tidal wave of opprobrium he received rather than the sympathy he seemed to be seeking, was a second tweet of "many peeps hating about me earning good money that show how jealous u are, instead of realising the tweet was about how hard life gets."

Well, Jamie, you could have made it slightly easier by not turning on your laptop. As he said himself in a follow-up tweet, "there's too many *rseholes on twitter."

The problem with footballers on Twitter is that they cannot be policed, beyond fining them once the damage is already done – there's no press officer there to step in and advise them that, on this occasion, they should not click on the 'send' button. At the risk of making a generalisation or two, footballers aren't always the smartest tools in the box (exhibit A: VLP) but are often surrounded by people whose primary functions are to cosset them and buff up their ego. It's a toxic combination, giving rise to a generation of young men who don't think twice before they post.

Obviously there are other offenders at other clubs – we only have to think back a few days to recall Joleon Lescott's 'accidental' tweet of his fancy wheels in the aftermath of Villa's humiliation, which met with predictable fury among smarting fans. And over at West Brom, it was Saido Berahino – who else? – who should have let tweeting dogs lie when he announced in the September 2015 transfer window: "sad how i cant say exactly how the club has treated me but i can officially say i will never play Jeremy Peace." A faultless display in biting the hand that feeds, and Saido soon found that it's a long road back into the good books.

You can excuse O'Hara and Berahino for being over-emotional, Lescott because it's such a weird thing to tweet that it's technically possible that he may really have tweeted it by accident, and Halford for being a bit of a berk. But Van La Parra has, sadly, in just a few words, communicated a casual contempt for his fans. Because the bottom line is this: Fans love you if you give your all for the club. They hate when you don't. To suggest that these happenstances are interchangeable because you get paid a king's ransom either way, shows a lack of respect for your fans, your club – and yourself.

Joey Barton @joey7barton, 3.1m followers

A bizarre mix of cod-philosophising, attempts to appear intelligent, and vaguely libellous spats with former players. Endlessly entertaining, for the wrong reasons.

Rio Ferdinand @rioferdy5, 6.8m followers

Can't resist getting into Twitter arguments with pundits like Robbie Savage and Stan Collymore, and indeed random fans. Earned a £25k fine and three-match ban for using the derogatory term 'sket' to describe a woman.

Leon Knight @leonknight_, 40,800 followers

The Chelsea drop-out now playing for a village side in Cheshire offers a charming mix of sexism and videos of himself commentating on goals he scored in a less-than-glittering career.

Michael Owen @themichaelowen, 3.4m followers

As hopeless at Twitter as he was deadly in front of goal. Once tweeted a picture of a dog sniffing another dog's private parts, with the words 'I wonder if Mrs O will be so kind tonight'...

Ryan Babel @ryanbabel, 1m followers

Also prone to terrible attempts at philosophy ("Being happy doesn't mean you have it all, it just means you're happy for all you have!"), Ryan incurred a £10k fine for tweeting an image of Howard Webb in a Man United strip after Liverpool were beaten by United in 2011.

Marvin Morgan @marvinnmorgan, 12,000 followers

The Havant and Waterlooville striker certainly knows how to endear himself to fans. In January 2011 he tweeted to Aldershot Town supporters who had booed him off the pitch, "I hope you all die." Released by Aldershot not long after.

Carlton Cole @carltoncole1, 146,000 followers

One-time Wolves goal machine Carlton didn't win many friends when he tweeted "Immigration has surrounded the Wembley premises! I knew it was a trap!" when England played Ghana in a friendly. That'll be £20,000 in fines, please.

Gregory van der Wiel @Gvanderwiel, 490,000 followers

When it comes to oafishness online, Paris Saint-Germain defender Gregory takes the cake. In 2009, he ruled himself out of a Holland international due to a supposed concussion, then tweeted a picture of himself hanging out at a rap concert the same night.

Jonjo Shelvey @shelveyjs, 2,600 followers

Deleted his Twitter account for some time in 2011, after tweeting a picture of his 'tackle'.

Emmanuel Frimpong @iamfrimpong, 755,000 followers

Former Wolves loanee Frimpong's tweets are relentless in their self-regard. He also managed to land himself a club fine by tweeting anti-Semitic abuse to a Spurs fan.

Ashley Cole @therealAC3, 2.6m followers

If you post a tweet calling the FA a 'bunch of tw*ts' then it's never going to end well for you. Ashley found himself £90,000 lighter for that momentary lapse of reason.