I attach below a post of mine from 3-4 years or so ago which may be of interest to you.
It quotes the respected sportswriter Brian Glanville's take on the subject from some 30 years ago. I was replying at the time to another Blue who had raised similar observations to yours. Perhaps Aldridge and his (no doubt) extensive back-up team of researchers might want to track down this contemporaneous take, from a highly respected observer of football over many decades, on events that surrounded Heysel and which subsequently impacted on that sublime Everton team of the mid-80s?:
"For your interest, herewith Brian Glanville's take on the matters of behaviours evidenced by Liverpool supporters and the media. This reflects the article you quote by Tony Evans (no relation!) and 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."
