ALMOST

a week on and still no more than the two arrests inside the ground on the day, following the attack on Manchester City’s bus. ‘We will do everything in our power to put these people before the courts,’ promised Merseyside Police’s match commander, Superintendent Paul White. Yet as more details emerge, his stewardship appears either incompetent or causative to the carnage. If it is substantiated that Merseyside Police would not let Manchester City change route because it would disappoint Liverpool’s fans; that it was announced outside Anfield that the bus was five minutes away; that just 49 police officers were on duty rather than the hundreds required; that the match was ranked only category B and not one of increased risk; and that the bus’s precise journey was made public for health and safety reasons so that fans did not rush from street to street in an attempt to confront it, the match commander should be stood down from his position. If Manchester City, like most elite clubs, did not have transport designed to withstand a terror attack there could have been serious physical injury. Superintendent White utterly misjudged the threat around the event, may have inadvertently contributed to the danger, and the subsequent mop-up seems unhurried at best. This is a mistake that cannot happen twice.