Cristiano Ronaldo topped the list of the Premier League’s most abused footballers – with EIGHT of Manchester United’s top ten stars. The Portuguese superstar, 37, received 12,520 malicious messages between August 13, 2021 and January 24, 2022. This included a peak on August 27, the day he completed his move to Old Trafford. Club captain Harry Maguire was second with 8,954 over the same period. Of these, 2,903 were sent on November 7 after Maguire apologized to fans following the 2-0 defeat by Manchester City. Marcus Rashford (2,557), Bruno Fernandes (2,464), Fred (1,924) and David de Gea (1,394) were also in the top ten – with departing midfielders Jesse Lingard (1,605) and Paul Pogba (1,446) seventh and ninth respectively. Tottenham Hotspur’s Harry Kane (2,127) and Manchester City’s Jack Grealish (1,538) were the only two not to play for the Red Devils in that period to make the list of aggrieved stars – which includes six England internationals. In total, the BBC’s Ofcom state recorded 600,000 of 2.3 million tweets in the first five months of last season – with seven out of the top ten players affected. 7 per cent of footballers were abused every day, while just 2 per cent of players at the end of half of total offending. However, the Alan Turing Institute – the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence – found that the majority of football fans use social media responsibly.