It was an embarrassing evening for Watford’s sporting director Cristiano Giaretta on Monday after he inadvertently shared a semi-naked picture of a woman on his Instagram stories.

The black and white photograph – with strategically-placed blue butterflies and the message ‘sleep tight’ - appeared just after 10pm on Giaretta’s personal Instagram page, and was deleted soon after.

However, that was ample time for the social media world to grab copies and Twitter sprang to life with a series of comedy tweets, doctored versions of the picture and facetious questions directed at the Italian.

Giaretta later posted another Instagram story which simply said ‘Sorry my mistake’.

However, in the early hours of the morning he posted a third Insta story which said: ‘Notice: hacker on. Sorry again’.

In a statement Watford said: “The club considers this a private matter related to a personal account and will be issuing no further comment.”

I understand the error happened when Giaretta clicked on a picture he had been sent on WhatsApp and managed to end up sharing it as an Instagram story.