A four-year-old football fanatic from Stevenage joined in with thousands of players and supporters across the country on Saturday by holding his own minute’s silence.

Charlie Hughes set up his toy football figures in a line, told his dad to “be quiet”, and stood silently to pay respect to those who have died at war before playing out a game between his beloved team Arsenal and Premier League rivals Chelsea.

His dad, Wayne, quickly took a picture of his son’s silence which went viral when he posted it social networking site Twitter.

So far the post has had about 3,000 retweets with Ian Wright, Rodney Marsh and Piers Morgan all commenting on the snap.

Wayne said: “I took him to Arsenal vs Burnely last week and they held the silence in the ground before the game, so I think he got the idea there.”