Tottenham players sent social media warning by Ange Postecoglou after Ryan Sessegnon appeal

Tottenham head coach Ange Postecoglou has advised his players of the pitfalls of social media, and described looking for validation online as "like walking into the prison yard and saying you’re innocent".

Ryan Sessegnon, the Spurs winger, this week appealed for understanding on social media after revealing he had undergone a second surgery on his hamstrings in the space of seven months.

In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Sessegnon asked supporters to be “careful what you say online [because] words hurt and no-one chooses to be in this position”.

Postecoglou, who is not on social media, understands why his players use the platforms, but says they would be foolish to look for sympathy or positive feedback.

"I guess the easy thing to say is ‘just stay off social media’ and that’s easy for me to say and I can do that," Postecoglou said.

"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.

"But 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 so 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’."

Asked if he had warned his players against using the likes of X and Instagram, Postecoglou added: "I give [the players] advice.

"But always reticient to dictate because I’m not in their shoes. Who’s to say if I was in my early 20s living today as a footballer that I wouldn’t be all over social media? It’s like when people say you can’t get kids off their iPads or PlayStations and in our day we were always outside. To be fair, we had no option. If we had an option maybe I would’ve been inside too. So you have to have some understanding.

"But at the same time I do try to provide a little bit of counsel. They need to understand for all the access you have in your life and all the good stuff you get out of it there’s always a responsibility and understanding, and needs to be a maturity that there’s a possibility of not such good stuff being there as well, and you have to be prepared for that.

"If you’re not or if it affects you really badly if it comes the other way then you’re probably better off, and there’s probably a sense that you’re not ready to enter that world.

"That’s advice from an old bloke. I don’t know how much they listen or how much of it is right. All I can do is provide counsel from my experience."