Twitter UK have apologised to Manchester United defender Phil Jones, after a tweet emerged from their official account mocking his ability.
The @TwitterUK account posted a message on the social networking site on Tuesday with the message: "name a better footballer than Phil Jones".
Jones has been subject of intense criticism for his performances, from opposition fans and United supporters.
Manchester United complained that the website had breached its own guidelines relating to online harassment. The tweet has since been deleted.
A Twitter spokesperson told ESPN: "Our aim was to showcase our new product feature, conversation controls, which allows you to select who can reply to a Tweet. It was not our intention to cause upset and once we realised our mistake, we immediately deleted the Tweet."
Chris Smalling & Phil Jones
The solution for Jones may be to look for a loan move, as benefited his regular defensive partner, Chris Smalling.
Smalling returns to United's squad following a season-long loan at AS Roma, which appears to have restored both his market value and his manager's faith.
Ole Gunnar Solskjaer commented on his return:
"I think Chris has shown over his career at Man United how valuable he is for Man United.
"This season was about him being a regular, going to Roma, showing and proving how good a centre-back he is.
"I wanted to give Harry [Maguire], Vic [Victor Lindelof], maybe Axel [Tuanzebe] a chance, so we found out that was the best for him to go to Roma, play for a year.
"Now he's coming back and Chris has shown this season that he will be valuable."
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