The amount of discriminatory abuse towards black footballers on social media is nothing short of staggering

Football's anti-discrimination organisation Kick It Out want to see bigger strides being made in the stamping out of discriminatory abuse towards footballers on social media.

Kick It Out has conducted some in-depth research to highlight the prevalence of the issue, using key words and the names of players and clubs, to show that the discriminatory, mostly racial, abuse is much more present than anyone could imagine. The organisation found that, this season alone, there were 134,400 discriminatory posts on Twitter, Facebook, supporters' forums and online blogs. And a number of high-profile players have been singled out according to the research. Kick It Out found that Mario Balotelli received 8,000 discriminatory posts, 52% of which were of a racist nature while Arsenal's Danny Welbeck was sent 1,700 discriminatory posts with half of them based around race. Daniel Sturridge similarly received 1,600 posts that were discriminatory, with more than 60% abusing on grounds of sexual orientation. Chelsea are the club who receive the highest number of discriminatory posts (20,000) while Liverpool are next with 19,000. A huge 88% of all abusive messages that were analysed by the study came via Twitter. It's a truly shocking survey. Everybody just needs to calm down. Source: The Guardian.