This is long and boring and I recommend not reading it, however…….

Very occasionally and only after a few beverages I will post a comment on the BBC football pages, usually in response to Kopites giving Everton shit. I am not proud of this.

In response to an article about Crystal Palace facing the biggest football injustice ever by not being allowed to play in Europe I responded:

“Surely all English teams getting banned after the rampage of Liverpool fans is the biggest injustice in the history of football”

Two days later I received this email:

“Thank you for recently contributing to the BBC website.
Unfortunately, we've removed your comment because it broke the house rules.

Your comment was considered to have broken the following House Rule:

"We reserve the right to fail comments which...

Are considered to be off-topic for the discussion or are derailing the discussion onto a different topic."

Please take a moment to read the house rules, so we don’t have to remove your comments in the future.”

I was annoyed at this and spent 10 minutes filling in stupid forms to register an appeal, which I phrased:

“ The article is a discussion regarding ‘The Biggest Injustice in the History of Football’. These words appear in the title of the article. Suggesting another injustice was bigger is patently not off topic neither is it derailing the subject into another topic. It is clearly discussing the topic in the title of the article. It feels like the removal of the comment is an agenda based action due to an unconscious bias to a certain club and the comment clearly needs to be reinstated in the pursuit of fairness”

Imagine my surprise when the appeal was accepted with the following response:

“Dear BBC User,
Thank you for contacting the BBC.
In this instance, it appears your comment was removed in error so we have reinstated it.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention and please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.
Due to the volume of correspondence we receive, we are unable to discuss this matter further.

Regards,

BBC Moderation Services”

I simultaneously feel like I am turning into Victor Meldrew whilst also boldly fighting the good fight. COYB!