"He was upset and angered" - Wolves rallying around Tolu Arokodare after social media racist abuse

The Nigerian international was sent several abusive messages on social media after missing a penalty in Wolves' defeat to Crystal Palace, before the club, governing bodies and the player himself called it out publicly.

The Police have since launched an investigation and Arokodare is set to give a statement to officers, as Edwards described how difficult the player has found it this week.

"It's been a really difficult week for him," Edwards said.

"He was upset and angered by it, understandably so, but we've supported him and had a few individual chats with him. 

"We've spoken about it as a group as well to make sure that we get around him and support him as well.

"He's had overwhelming support from a lot of Wolves fans and other people reaching out, which is really good. The Premier League have been in touch, there's support there, but we're talking about something that we are having to do far too many times.

"There's been a number of these instances, very high profile as well, over this last week, which is really sad. I've been a head coach and manager a number of times when my players have had this and the sad thing about it is that all of them have had it before. 

"That's what's really difficult, that's really tough to hear. 

"The unfortunate thing is we can't forget about it because we're going to be hearing about it again in the future. It could be someone this weekend, probably will be, which is so, so wrong."

The player is fit and in the right mindset to play against Villa in the West Midlands derby, Edwards says, despite being one of four Premier League players targeted with racist messages in the same weekend.

"It puts things back in perspective," the head coach added.

"He was quiet on Monday. You could see that he was upset, he was down. 

"But in terms of his training this week, he's been able to shift that mindset and in the last few days we've seen the usual Tolu, especially when we've been out on the pitch.

"I still think he's been quite quiet around the place, but that's understandable.

"As a middle-aged white man, I can't begin to put myself in his position. It really angers and saddens me.

"I apologised to him that he's having to go through this, but I can't understand how he's feeling because I've never had to deal with anything like that.

"I can't imagine how he's feeling, but we're here for him and we'll help him any way we can.

"We want to support our players and get behind them. Our supporters can have an influence and get behind him and support him and show that love by singing for him.

"I'd love us to look after our own in these sorts of moments when people are going through adversity like that."

The latest slew of abusive messages has led for calls on social media companies to target and ban accounts, and also have more control on content published on their websites.

Edwards said: "I know a lot of the abuse has come from accounts from the other side of the world or somewhere else, and it's difficult then to track these people down.

"Obviously the authorities and police know that and Tolu will be giving a statement at some stage over the next few days. 

"It becomes difficult to stop that, I'm sure the social media companies can do a lot more."