BEAUTIFUL GAME IN THE GUTTER

Lack of police, untrained stewards, complacency from football’s powers-that-be, idiotic fans. All combine to leave...

The attack on Jack Grealish shocked the football world on Sunday. Sportsmail looks at who is to blame for the rise of the ugliness in the game.

CLUBS

even the Premier League now admit it: football got so wrapped up in its own glossy self-publicity that it became complacently convinced that police were barely needed in grounds. When Paul Mitchell attacked Jack Grealish, only one steward got anywhere near the assailant, in the 20 seconds it took to strike the player and wheel off.

Premier League director of policy Bill Bush has told Sportsmail that there is something ‘iconic and symbolically important about the police uniform in the ground’ though the worst of the problems lie outside his league, where the penny-pinching is far greater.

Security experts insist there is a correlation between the number of officers in grounds and the ability of stewards to control potentially anti- social fans. But there has been a concerted effort among clubs to limit the amount they pay for police.

Clubs now only pay for officers stationed in a narrowly defined area within the ‘footprint’ of grounds. Manchester United are typical of many — paying only for officers who patrol the stadium forecourt but not the Sir Matt Busby Way, which runs adjacent to it. Many clubs pay £210 for three hours of an officer’s time and largely make do with their own security staff for the game.

Ipswich Town went all the way to the Supreme Court to fight Suffolk Police’s demands for £500,000, covering costs for officers patrolling Portman Road and Sir Alf Ramsey Way between 2008 and 2013 — and won.

Wigan owner Dave Whelan also won a court case to prevent a big pay- out to Greater Manchester Police. one leading Premier League club which was condemning racist behaviour at its ground before Christmas has engaged lawyers to find ways of reducing the money they pay to police. In the lower professional leagues, there will sometimes be no police within grounds and it is here that some of the worst disorder is witnessed.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has said that some of the wealthiest clubs in the country are only meeting five per cent of the overall bill to keep stadiums safe on match days. Khan said that the Metro- politan Police were spending almost £7million a year policing football matches in the capital, yet recovering less than £350,000 from the clubs.

STEWARDS

The sight of Grealish being punched was shocking, yet footage of a grey-haired Birmingham steward, in a hi-vis jacket, provided the most extraordinary insight into the depths to which security at games has sunk.

As the player attempts to celebrate villa’s goal, the steward shoves Grealish, then pushes villa’s Irish midfielder Conor hourihane over an advertising hoarding. A West Midlands Police officer needs all her strength to prevent hourihane retaliating. Police policing stewards.

Clubs have been so determined to cut costs on policing that stewards of any description are involved in crowd control. The majority do a good and responsible job, some for less than the living wage of £7.83. But many do not even have a basic Security Industry Authority badge needed to search a fan, according to one football security source who has policed hundreds of top level games.

The source describes clubs being in a desperate pursuit of personnel to work as stewards, some of whom may have been working a nightclub door until 5am. There is a rapid turnover of staff.

‘They won’t know how to deal with incidents,’ said the source. ‘They will be briefed by one of the supervisors who has attended the stewards’ briefing, 90 minutes before kick-off. They’ll be told very basic details — kick-off time, level of risk, what the fans are like. Many are fine but a number are not the brightest. There is this assumption you can trade police for stewards.’

BIRMINGHAM CITY

IT is usually a minority, of course, but Birmingham City’s reputation for anti-social behaviour and misconduct at games is well known. In november, the club topped the table for most arrests of any club in england’s top five leagues — for the third successive year.

The reasons are complicated. Generalisations are risky when there is the idiot factor. But the visceral hate for villa among a contingent of City’s fans seems to stem from the fact that villa won the european Cup and First Division title in a two-year period in the early 1980s. villa are fond of reminding Birmingham of the fact.

The area surrounding St Andrew’s has more than its share of social deprivation. Mitchell is from the Sheldon district, while a despicable supporter who trolled Grealish over the death of his brother is from Chelmsley Wood — both rough, Blues-supporting areas.

Birmingham recorded 591 arrests in 2017-18, up 22 per cent from 2016- 17. The entire Premier League had only 374 arrests. The club point to schemes undertaken to address poor behaviour. In May 2016 a campaign was launched urging responsible drinking.

The club stress the policing and stewarding was adequate against villa. But well-placed sources do have concerns that the dismissals of four respected senior members of staff have left certain departments a little stretched, bleeding into security. Chief financial officer Roger Lloyd, financial controller Gary Moore, club secretary Julia Shelton, and chief coordinating officer Joanne Allsopp departed this season after long spells.

FOOTBALL’S AUTHORITIES

IT is impossible to legislate for every invasion. however many officers and stewards patrol the perimeter, there is always potential for the likes of Mitchell to run on. When Birmingham entertained villa last season, there were 457 police officers in attendance — one for every 53 spectators.

But Britain’s top football police officer Mark Roberts believes some in the game are complacent about security. eFL chief executive Shaun harvey’s wish to lift the long-established ban on supporters drinking alcohol in the stands is ‘complete nonsense’, he believes.

Those who argue for a more liberal regime point to the fact that arrests at grounds have more than halved in the past decade and were down six per cent in 2017-18 compared with the previous season.

The FA suggested there was cause for concern when yesterday they called a summit with the prospect of increasing punishments over incidents like these.

SOCIETY

BRoADeR reasons were offered yesterday for why an attack of this kind would be carried out. Dr Martha newson, an oxford University anthropologist, described a heightened aggression brought on by the use of cocaine by some fans.

Dr newson told the BBC that perpetrators of violence were conforming to ‘group identities’ as part of a tribal ‘attack and defend’ psychology. She has studied hooliganism in Brazil, where the presence of ‘security mums’ — mothers positioned between the fans and the pitch — act as a more effective deterrent to violence. ‘They are a low threat group, rather than men facing other angry men,’ she said.

Senior police officers believe that part of the problem is a receding collective memory of days when football was synonymous with hooliganism. ‘older fans don’t want to go back to that,’ says one senior police officer. ‘Younger ones never knew it.’

Another officer believes the greater profile afforded by social media and saturation news has made acts like Sunday’s more appealing to those of a warped disposition who are looking for the attention.

But none of those theories explains the presence of those who, insulated by the anonymity of a football crowd, go to games to unleash a barrage of abuse and hate in a way which would not be tolerated on the street.

Some in this number seem to have made abuse the sole aim of their afternoon. The leap between dispensing for an hour or so and crossing the line to enter the pitch does not seem such a great one.

Mitchell’s lawyers said yesterday that he ‘cannot explain what came over him’.