Ange Postecoglou has advised his Tottenham players to take social media with a pinch of salt after a difficult week for Ryan Sessegnon.
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Full-back Sessegnon had surgery on his right hamstring on Monday, after an operation on his left hamstring last summer, and called for people to "be careful what you say online" in a post on his social media channels.
Sessegnon, 23, has endured a torrid time with injuries and faced plenty of abuse on Twitter and Instagram over his fitness woes, but boss Postecoglou likened those platforms to a prison yard.
"I guess the easy thing to say is, 'look just stay off social media,' and that's easy for me to say," Postecoglou said.
"I can do that but I guess for younger people it's a vehicle for them or a platform for them to have a voice, which I kind of understand.
"They've also got to be mature enough to also know that sometimes the audience, I think for want of a better term, social media is like walking into the prison yard and saying you're innocent.
"You're not going to get a hell of a lot of sympathy. Most of it is going to be coming back at you.
"If you're kind of prepared for that then (fine), but if you're jumping into there to try and feel good, my sense of it is, I'm not all over it but you'll rarely come away from it feeling really good about yourself.
"Even with the most genuine of reasons for saying what you want to say or putting out what you want to put out. It's just that kind of platform you're invariably going to come away from thinking I probably shouldn't have said anything."
Australian Associated Press
