KOP CRACKDOWN
Fans face arrest for offensive chanting
FANS chanting about the disasters of Hillsborough or Munich at Anfield on Monday night will face ejection and arrest. There will be zero tolerance of the sort of scenes which blighted last season’s Liverpool v Manchester United Europa League games with an increased police presence around the ground before and after the Premier League clash.
Offenders will be thrown out and face prosecution by Merseyside police, who are alert to the potential for trouble after ugly scenes earlier this year when fighting and illicit chanting marred the two Europa League fixtures.
Slurs chanted by United fans about the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy — when 96 Liverpool supporters died at an FA Cup semi- final — were widely condemned after the first leg.
Liverpool’s travelling contingent at Old Trafford were also criticised for singing about the Munich air crash of 1958 in which 23 people, including 11 United staff members, perished. Embarrassingly, UEFA charged Liverpool for chanting ‘Manchester is full of s***’ rather than for mocking the deaths.
Both clubs are desperate for Monday night to run smoothly and have released a joint statement appealing for calm and warning supporters about their conduct.
The statement says: ‘We ask all supporters to be respectful and help eradicate all forms of offensive and discriminatory behaviour.
‘If any supporters are found to be engaged in offensive or discriminatory behaviour by stewards or CCTV they will be immediately removed from the stadium, risk arrest, prosecution and be reported in accordance with the club’s ground regulations.’
Merseyside and Greater Manchester police are working together to manage the game. Five arrests were made after fighting flared in the home sections of Old Trafford at the Europa League second leg when around a dozen Liverpool fans unfurled a provocative banner. Earlier, Liverpool supporters on their way to the game had been met with a sign that read ‘Murderers’.
United denounced a small section of their own fans who chanted ‘ The Sun was right’ — a reference to the Hillsborough disaster — at Anfield.