Mistake sees Manchester United labeled ‘rubbish’ in ticker, leading to TV presenter apology as trainee blamed for ‘mistake’

The BBC has issued an apology for a rogue ticker on its news channel that read “Manchester United are rubbish” during a tennis report on Tuesday morning.

The first sightings of the blunder came around 9.35am with viewers watching the action from the French Open tennis tournament.

To the surprise of many, the ticker then showed the words castigating the Red Devils followed by “it’s raining everywhere”.

Two hours later, presenter Annita McVeigh was forced to apologize and blamed a trainee who was learning to use the ticker.

It caused quite a stir on social media, with many enjoying the jokes he created.

An embarrassed McVeigh said: “Earlier some of you might have noticed something rather unusual on the ticker that runs along the bottom of the screen with news commenting on Manchester United.

“I hope Manchester United fans weren’t offended by this.

“Let me explain what was going on – behind the scenes someone was training to learn how to use the ticker and how to put text on the ticker, so they were just writing random things, not seriously.”

She continued: “Apologies if you saw this and were offended and you’re a Manchester United fan, but it was definitely a mistake and it wasn’t supposed to appear on screen.

“So that’s what happened, we just thought we’d better explain it to you.”

Manchester United have suffered their worst points tally since the Premier League was founded 30 years ago.

The former Premier League champions collected 58 points for the season, which was just enough to earn the club Europa League qualification for next season.

United recorded a goal difference of zero and finished the season 35 points behind champions and bitter rivals Manchester City.