Well, the day has finally arrived. I have a valid excuse to write about football and my job. These two cherished subjects were always going to collide at some point; similar to a Shawcross-Ramsey tackle, but instead breaking my silence.

My statto-like obsession with football over the years hasn’t just been with events that unravel on the pitch, I’ve been equally fascinated by the politics, scandals and commercial clout off it; however more recently it’s how all of the latter has become even more exposed within the game.

By exposed I don’t necessarily mean through the determination of investigative reporters, or name-and-shame tabloid sell outs; we are treated to stories on a daily basis about our favoured club’s affairs. What I mean is how social networking channels, more notably Twitter, has suddenly imparted footballers with a new kind of power, a power different to wealth and notoriety, but just as potent: real time communication with the outside world. Yes we all know footballers are only human and they make tumultuous mistakes like us mere mortals from time to time, but Twitter and Facebook now provide a fresh opportunity to ignite or dampen their careers – all in a single tweet.

Take Darren Bent, the then Tottenham Hotspur player, who released a candid but foul-mouthed message to his chairman about his seemingly slow transfer to Sunderland, posted on Twitter. Although he was very publicly excluded from Tottenham’s pre-season tour of China, his actions did however prompt hundreds of Sunderland fans to sign up to Twitter and convince the player to join their club (Sunderland FC has the seventh highest Twitter following out of all the Premiership clubs, but more on this shortly).

Not forgetting Ryan Babel, the Liverpool player, who announced on Twitter his disdain of being dropped from a game by tweeting “The Boss left me out. No explanation”. With no imminent club to go to, the striker not only felt the heat from his manager but from a large slice of the 66,000 Liverpool fans on Twitter (Liverpool FC currently has the most followers on Twitter in the Premiership).

In January this year, the mighty Manchester United were the first league club to ban its players from using Facebook and Twitter, resulting in Rooney and co having to cease their rather popular, highly exposed online profiles. The reason? Executives believed that such activity by key players could potentially compromise the clubs integrity, as well as increasing the likelihood of someone simply putting their foot in it. And who can blame them? Manchester United may be an historical football club, but it still operates as a global business and one that has the right to monitor and regulate what its personnel do and say. Although Twitter and Facebook create an exciting bridge between fan and player, it also creates an unnecessary headache for the club because they lose that control and authority. Putting a smart phone into the hands of most footballers is probably one of the stupidest (and potentially entertaining) things to do. A social experiment I would always relish!

So, if big name players are restricted in how they can raise their personal and commercial brands online, then surely their respective clubs are on the ball, right? Well, you’d think. After reading a great post by Rubber Republic recently on how Premiership clubs fared when looking at social media and reach, it was surprising to see the ‘league’ standings.

As you can see this table doesn’t reflect the actual league positioning of each club, however, the big guns are still conspicuously nestled in the top half. Manchester City, with their renewed ownership and wealth, are joint top with Chelsea, followed closely by Liverpool, Arsenal and Man U. It’s easy to think that Man City are buying their way to social media supremacy, but unlimited funds – as proven on the pitch too – doesn’t always guarantee success. A clear, astute and often inexpensive social media and content strategy is all it takes. In other words, they know where their fans (followers/influencers) are, and are satisfying them using a number of platforms.

Facebook and Twitter only works well for a football club if they have fans that actively use them of course, but even if they don’t, the top clubs are sharp enough to use multiple channels to interact with them. Although Man City has an impressive 64.5m blog subscribers, this total isn’t attributed to just one authoritative blog, say on their site (they don’t have a blog) – this number is spread across various independent fan sites; all providing relentless fresh content, news, brand awareness, and ultimately, an expansive loyal target audience.

Clever or just obvious? Well, many of the big clubs, bar Man U, have relatively poor figures in this area, so Man City are cleverly reaping the rewards of other people’s online legwork. They don’t need to manage and maintain a time consuming blog, not when several others are essentially doing it for them.

Liverpool particularly shine out for their Facebook and Twitter acumen, simply because they manage them properly, with regular updates and answering questions; meaning fans genuinely feel connected to their club. Unlike Ryan Babel, the marketers within Liverpool FC aren’t abusing these platforms, or misleading their avid fan base; the trick is to be accessible without being generic or too outspoken.

To eulogise Man City once again, the reason they’re top of this table is due to a well thought out, researched and realistic integrated marketing strategy. Their offline efforts are complimented by what they do online, but more importantly, they aren’t solely reliant on social media to drive the brand forward. Poke London do deserve a lot of the credit for their part in the website redesign and its versatility, however, it’s the club’s overall multi-channelled strategy that has made them number one in this league, and probably will for some time – they just need to keep up the momentum.

That said, we all know they have the money, internal resources and time to make social media truly work for them compared to most of their Premiership rivals. Time, in particular, is something that Roberto Mancini probably wished he was blessed with too…