“Following end-of-season checks, final standings have been updated within the game, leaving Southampton fan Joshua and his team ‘The Bulldozers’ top of the table.” Bull is a fan of League One side Ipswich Town , but picked Premier League Southampton when registering for the game.

“The team formerly occupying the No 1 position has been removed from FPL due to a breach of our terms,” with reports emerging of a comment made about Manchester City’s Raheem Sterling, which were later confirmed by Antonov on Twitter.

The new winner was congratulated by Antonov and by the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford and Ipswich Town.

Bull, 29, wrote “This is crazy!” on Twitter. “Wow, so it looks like the longest FPL season is getting even longer …” he wrote in another tweet. “For everyone tweeting, I don’t know what’s going on either – I had an email from FPL this morning telling me that I’ve won(!), but I don’t know why …”

“Clearly, this isn’t how I’d have wanted to win,” he wrote in another tweet as people speculated that Antonov may have cheated before the comment about Sterling came to light.

Antonov spoke about the situation on his YouTube channel and on Twitter, saying that comments made in a private Facebook messenger chat with five friends had been leaked to the Fantasy Premier League. He described the comments as “football banter”.

“The reason for my disqualification is a moment of frustration with a player put into words, written between friends – it was never meant to offend any footballer on any basis,” he said on YouTube.

“I was disqualified from the season because something was taken out of context to a large extent, from a small Bulgarian private chat by a person that certainly doesn’t wish me well in life and made me look like something I’m not to the EPL.”

Antonov clarified further on Twitter. “Can I just say quickly … I am not racist. OK, that’s all I had to say, bye,” he wrote.

“Not saying the reason is racism, but the person that reported me for whatever he did, has said the exact same type of stuff in front of me when watching football together,” he wrote in a subsequent tweet. “You are giving way too much credit to sore losers … He is only standing up for his hurt ego.”

“The behaviour was explained to the EPL in two pages and I respect their decision. As I said in the video, I would never say anything like that to a player with the intent to offend them, it’s a small chat with friends, in a different language and different culture.”

Antonov continued to explain his comments, attempting to contextualise them in Bulgarian compared to English, as debate raged online.

“It is not a racist slur in Bulgarian language, I cannot find another way to explain this to English speaking people,” Antonov wrote in one reply. “Yes, what I said about Sterling is absolutely stupid and unacceptable (it is not just the N word), but it is not said because he is of black colour.”

Bull responded by reposting a tweet criticising Antonov’s defence of his actions with a comment of his own.

“I've been trying to find the right words to respond, and this says it all for me. Whether you think disqualification was the right decision or not, some things are more important than who gets to say they won FPL,” he wrote. “Don't normalise casual racism.”

Antonov’s removal moves Norwegian chess champion Magnus Carlsen back into the top 10 of the eight million strong competition.