We all know about online abuse, but the scale of it affecting Arsenal is mind-blowingly horrific.

In the last twelve months, there have been over three million messages, posts or comments mentioning an Arsenal player’s handle or the club generally.

The club is working with a data science company, Signify, to use AI to scan across all social media.

It looks for key words related to abuse and hate directed at players, coaches, officials, even the ticket office and supporters’ groups.

Of those three million, around 115,000 were read individually by members of the Signify team.

From these, 4,500 were verified as abusive and reported through to the platforms. But, as seems to be the case more widely, not all were taken down.

However, Signify, does not let it end here.

They focus on the most concerning accounts sending those messages, and provide the club with evidence on any that are affiliated to the club – for instance, season ticket holders.

Where links are found - and cross a criminal threshold - they recommend that the club share any relevant info with law enforcement.

The club also uses that information to take action of its own when it can, by removing abuser’s season ticket. Last season, three supporters received bans.

Three may seem a small number, but the deterrent effect has seen a 90% decrease in online abuse detected amongst Arsenal members.

Of course, the problem persists across all social media, and it’s getting worse. But for the Arsenal, it’s showing as a 24% increase in online abuse to what the club calls its ’player and coaching family’.

There’s little we, as supporters, can do to prevent this abuse – aside from not sending any, of course.

But it is clear the club is taking every step it can, so that its employees on and off the pitch can carry out their work without suffering abuse.