Vile abuse directed at stars including Raheem Sterling, Mo Salah and Danny Welbeck were unearthed.

One told Liverpool forward Salah he would “force feed the c*** bacon”, in reference to his Muslim faith.

Another told Manchester City starlet Sterling he was “just a typical c**n all pace no brain”.

And in a tweet dated September 2014, Arsenal star Welbeck is described as a “f****** cotton picking n*****”.

There were also similar posts aimed at Chelsea’s Michy Batschuayi, Arsenal’s Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Tottenham’s Moussa Sissoko.

The posts were discovered a day after the Government issued a white paper on online harms, which proposes new measures to regulate internet companies who do not adequately protect their users.

A spokesperson said: “Twitter says abuse and harassment has ‘no place’ on its site, but it is obvious that there really is a place for it there and in our view the problem is getting worse.

“Footballers, like anyone in society, are entitled to go about their work without being abused, intimidated or trolled.”

Social media consultant, Matt Navarra, said he was surprised “such vile derogatory tweets” had not been removed automatically by the platform.

He added: “There often seems to be a far quicker response and effort to resolve issues related to copyright-protected content for its brand users and advertisers, compared to other inappropriate content.

“This therefore inevitably raises questions over Twitter’s attention to things that they may see as a perceived greater risk to its revenue streams and growth versus the health and safety of its platform for its users.”

“This suggests Twitter’s content moderation processes and systems still have some way to go to be fully effective at auto-detecting such activity using AI and machine learning technology.

“It’s even more alarming to see more recent Islamophobic abusive tweets against Mo Salah not being detected or removed already.”

The tweets have since been deleted since their discovery.

Twitter has been approached for a response.

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