A DEBT collection firm has expressed its frustration after abusive tweets from its hacked Twitter account came to light when it featured as Huddersfield Town's main kit sponsor.

Ahead of their game against promotion-hunting Barnsley, which the Terriers lost 1-0 to the Tykes, Huddersfield posted a tweet – which now appears to have been deleted – on the clubs official Twitter account about last night’s sponsor Strikes Ltd.

The tweet said “Tonight’s shirt” with the ‘OK’ hand signal, followed by “Looking good, @strikesltd!”, and also featured an image of the club’s home shirt adorned with the Strikes Ltd logo.

The debt recovery firm has offices in Leeds and Newark, and on its website also says it offers repossession order, traveller eviction, and commercial rent arrears recovery services.

On its official Twitter account, tweets from the company can be seen using abusive language towards other Twitter users, concentrated around last year’s US election result and the defeat of Donald Trump.

However, company director Chris Bane said their account, which the firm has varely used for the past two years, was hacked last year and despite repeated efforts asking Twitter for help have been unable to access the account and remove the abuse.

Mr Bane said: "We don't have access to the account, our solicitors are trying to get it from Twitter.

"We know it's been hacked but we can't do anything about it; our LinkedIn page was also hacked.

"We're blocked out of it and we've asked Twitter countless times to help us sort it. They suspended the account but now it's been reactivated; there's nothing we can do.

"I didn't know it was back active until a few weeks ago, I was quite shocked to be honest. It's not a great situation.

"We won't succumb to these keyboard warriors and we'll be contacting Twitter again to get this sorted, but with the pandemic we can't be spending thousands of pounds trying to sort this when much of the business is shut."

Strikes also sponsors players Jonathan Hogg and Christopher Schindler and was match sponsor of the game against Luton Town earlier this season, and has a relationship with the Championship club stretching back several years.

Several fans expressed disappointment on Twitter after seeing the tweets, labelling it "very poor" from the club and saying it was "shameful".

Huddersfield Town have been approached for comment.