YOU twits!

Ipswich Town manager Mick McCarthy delivered a typically blunt assessment of his players using social networking websites following the controversy surrounding Michael Chopra’s latest posts.

The Blues striker responded to online taunts about his ongoing battle with a gambling addiction by publishing a picture of a huge bag stuffed with money on Wednesday afternoon, accompanied by the message: ‘Keep tweeting me about being in debt haha love it #cash #skint #lol #lendmeafiver.’ (sic). The 29-year-old then promptly deleted his account, which had been followed by nearly 15,000 people.

Town players like Jay Emmanuel-Thomas, Scott Loach, Tommy Smith, Aaron Cresswell, Aaron Mclean and Arran Lee-Barrett are all still active on the public website which connects millions of people.

“I don’t follow Twitter, so I’ll be brutally honest and say I don’t know what’s gone on,” said McCarthy.

“I don’t understand why people go on Twitter. Why you would get into an argument on it is beyond me. Arguing with faceless people that you don’t know and are never going to see – why would you bother?

“You learn as you go along, being in the public eye, that you don’t listen to things or read things. You have to not take notice of peoples’ opinions because they can be very hurtful. If you take notice of it, more fool you – I learnt that a long time ago.

“The players get involved in these social media sites to get bullied. Why bother?

“I haven’t seen it (the Chopra post).

“Someone showed me a picture of what he did. Listen, just don’t get involved – certainly with our fans. You don’t want to be falling out with them. You want to keep them on side.

“I haven’t said too much to him because I don’t know too much about it.”

McCarthy brought in a media law firm at previous club Wolves to brief his first-team and academy players about the perils of posting messages and pictures that could come back to haunt them.

It followed an incident when Greg Halford, who was on loan at Portsmouth but had returned to Molineux to attend Wolves’ Premier League match against Chelsea, went on Twitter to announce that Aston Villa midfielder Steve Sidwell was watching from the stands.

The following day Sidwell pulled out of a move to Wolves and joined Fulham, leading McCarthy to claim the deal had collapsed because ‘some twit tweeted it’.

The Blues boss has previously expressed concern that the website could lead to a ‘disgruntled numpty’ within his squad revealing his starting line-up.