Thursday 18 October 2018 17:13, UK
Chelsea have described the online abuse received by their captain Karen Carney during Wednesday night’s 1-0 Women's Champions League win over Fiorentina as "abhorrent and totally unacceptable".
Lionesses manager Phil Neville posted a message on Instagram on Thursday, detailing some of the abuse directed at England international Carney, who scored Chelsea's winner in their round of 16 first-leg clash with the Italian side at Kingsmeadow.
He described the abuse from one user in particular as "absolutely disgusting" and demanded Instagram take some form of action against the person who posted the messages.
A Chelsea statement on Thursday afternoon read: "This kind of abuse is abhorrent and totally unacceptable. We have reported the matter to Instagram."
In a statement given to Sky Sports News, an Instagram spokesman said: "We do not tolerate threatening or abusive behaviour, and the account that sent these messages has been removed from Instagram.
"We encourage anyone who sees content of this kind to report it via our in-app tools and our global team work 24/7 to review and remove anything that violates our community guidelines."
The Football Association has pledged to do all they can to support the vastly-experienced England midfielder.
"We are appalled and dismayed by the abuse directed towards Karen Carney on social media," an FA statement read.
"The FA takes such matters extremely seriously and we are offering our full support to Karen.
"The abuse of players on social networking sites is a serious concern and we call on the police and social media organisations to do everything they can to help tackle this growing problem.
"We provide all our senior England players with training, guidance and support on the use of social media and treat our duty of care in this regard with the utmost importance."
