Merseyside Police confirmed on Monday evening that they were investigating Twitter threats made towards Raheem Sterling and his three-year-old daughter after news of his imminent switch to Manchester City was announced.
Sterling is understood to have completed a medical at City on Monday after Liverpool accepted their third bid for the player, who made no secret of his desire to leave.
“The language used in these tweets is abhorrent,” a Merseyside Police spokesman said in the Liverpool Echo.
“We are taking the incident extremely seriously and an investigation by detectives in Liverpool CID is ongoing.
“People who use the internet to target others and who commit criminal offences such as harassment or hate crime in doing so are not beyond the law and can expect to be brought to justice.”