I first posted the following in 2018, I think. Still pertinent today and relates to your observations. Given it was expressing the reflections and experience of one our most respected UK sports/football journalists of all time, I do think this has value in assessing the views and antics of our 'Red Chums' at the other end of the EastLancs.. and especially when contrasted against the behaviours of their Blue neighbours across the city..
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Herewith Brian Glanville's take on the matters of behaviours evidenced by Liverpool supporters and the media.
This is taken from Glanville's book 'Champions of Europe; The History, Romance and Intrigue of the European Cup' (1991), some six and two years respectively after Heysel and Hillsborough. Glanville writes:
"As a club, Liverpool, alas, were not remotely matched by their notorious supporters.
Among these there was beyond doubt a core of decent, largely middle-aged, peaceful, pleasant fans, who would share the mature, sensible attitudes of the club itself.
There were also, as fans from other clubs all over the country knew all too well, thousands of brutalised, violent toughs, whose excesses had been known for many years.
When the detested Manchester United went to Anfield shortly before Heysel the city had seemed awash with hatred. Coaches and trains of United’s supporters were stoned. Mechanics would run out of garages to scream abuse at the coaches as they went by. When United, just a few weeks later, came once more to Merseyside to play Liverpool, this time in the FA Cup semi-final at Goodison Park, Liverpool’s supporters were firing flares into the Manchester fans’ sections.
Quite where Liverpool’s following had gained its spurious reputation for good conduct with a blinkered press was obscure.
But then, journalists see little or nothing from the Press Box, nothing of what goes on, often sinister and violent, in the surrounding streets and alleys, at railway stations. Unless they are privy to good, first-hand information, journalists accept the public, distorted image; in this case, a misleadingly benign one.
Nor would it be enough to say that violence among Liverpool fans could be explained by unemployment, the crumbling and deliquescence of a doomed city given the behaviour of Everton’s fans, in Rotterdam for the Cup Winners’ Cup Final two weeks before, which had been exemplary."
