BBC forced to delete tweet showing Ugo Ehiogu Championship Manager stats following his tragic death

THE BBC were accused of showing disrespect as they were forced to delete a tweet about Ugo Ehiogu’s Championship Manager stats.

Former England defender Ehiogu died early on Friday after suffering a heart attack at Tottenham’s training ground the previous day.

He was rushed by ambulance to hospital, but he sadly passed away this morning.

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A number of football fans and former Premier League team-mates flooded social media to pay tribute to the 44-year-old.

However, an ill-judged post from BBC Sport was quickly taken down after it received a huge negative reaction.

Alongside a picture of his stats from the game back in the 1996/97 season, BBC tweeted: “Just look at Ugo Ehiogu's stats on Championship Manager 2... What a career the ex-Aston Villa man had.”

Ehiogu was rated highly for his influence, strength and aggression, scoring the top mark of 20 in each. His tackling was also rated at 18.

The defender played every game for Aston Villa that season as they finished fifth.

Twitter users immediately reacted to the post, hitting back at the insensitive nature of the tweet and demanding for it to be deleted.

Those requests were quickly granted.

Twitter user Donald MacCuish wrote: “Disrespectful tweet given he passed away this morning, you want to analyse his stats from a computer game?”

Another said: “BBC is this you're [sic] idea of showing respect? What next, a clip of him on FIFA?'”

While another simply added: “Delete this.”

BBC issued a statement later in the day, saying: “The tweet was an unfortunate error of judgement and was deleted immediately.”