Norwich City defender Ryan Bennett admitted he had to learn the hard way about the perils of social media.

The 23-year-old was fined £8,000 by the FA as well as disciplined by the Canaries towards the end of last season for becoming embroiled in an angry exchange on his personal Twitter account. Bennett deleted his account at the time of the incident and the centre-back is now fully aware Premier League footballers can be seen as high-profile targets.

'I regret what happened but it is has gone now and it won't happen again. It is one of those things you do and then you realise afterwards you can't really get involved in,' he said. 'Everything you do as a Premier League footballer is looked at. Maybe at the time of that incident I didn't fully appreciate that. Now I have had it explained to me and like I say it won't be happening again. Every player is in the same boat and you have to be careful what you tweet.

'If you do make a mistake you will be punished for it. You can go on the majority of people's tweets and there will always be those who just want to get into a confrontation and say things to you that if you were not a footballer you might act in a different way, but it is up to us not to react in those situations.'

Bennett was restored to the Norwich line up for the recent 3-1 win over West Ham and the former Peterborough defender hopes that is the start of an upturn in fortunes.

'We want to look up the table now. We have played well in periods and we need to make the most of that,' he said. 'I think in terms of the football we have played we have started better this year, but the results have not been as good as we would have hoped and that is what it is all about. We got that against West Ham and we need to build on it. We have found it hard to score goals but getting three in that game will hopefully enable us to go forward with more confidence because we have a group of lads here who will never give in.'