Raheem Sterling Chelsea abuse comes after Kick It Out report shows racism in football on the rise

The high-profile incident follow the release of figures showing incidents reported to anti-discrimination body Kick It Out increased last season for at least the fifth year in a row

Manchester City forward Raheem Sterling suffered alleged racist abuse at Chelsea on Saturday, just a week after a banana skin was thrown at Arsenal striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang after he scored against Tottenham.

The two high-profile incidents follow the release of figures showing incidents reported to anti-discrimination body Kick It Out increased last season for at least the fifth year in a row.

Kick It Out's statistics for the 2017-18 season, published on November 28, showed a 22 per cent rise in racist incidents and an overall 11 per cent rise in incidents of discrimination reported at all levels of the English game.

The figures showed there were 520 incidents reported last season across Kick It Out's various platforms, which include social media, its website and app.

That compared to 469 the previous season, continuing an ongoing trend after there were 402 reports in 2015-16, 393 in 2014-15, 284 in 2013-14 and just 77 in 2012-13.

Over half of last season's incidents, 273 (52.5 per cent), involved racism while homophobia accounted for 111 of the reports, or another 21.3 per cent. Those figures were up from 224 and 102 respectively in 2016-17.

Reports of disability discrimination more than doubled from 14 to 29, 5.6 per cent of the total, while there were six incidents of transphobia after none were reported the previous season.

There were 61 reports of faith-based discrimination and 34 of sexism with six concerning other forms of discrimination, down from 80, 39 and 10 respectively in 2016-17.

The professional game accounted for 41 per cent of the overall reports with 214 - 110 in the Premier League and 86 in the Football League with nine in the National League, one in the Women's Super League and eight in UEFA competitions.

There were 105 reports from the grassroots game and 201 concerning comments on social media.