John Aldridge has hit the nail on the head in highlighting the idiocy of the individuals who indulged in tragedy chanting during Luton’s 1-1 draw against Liverpool on Sunday.
The match was tainted by unwelcome renditions of ‘always the victims’ and ‘feed the Scousers’, two disgusting chants mocking those who lost their lives in the Hillsborough disaster and poverty in our city.
The FA have released a bog-standard statement in response to the chanting, and former Reds striker Aldridge rightly condemned those responsible for polluting the Bedfordshire air with such abhorrent taunts.
In his latest column for the Liverpool Echo, he wrote: “Singing ‘feed the Scousers’ or ‘always the victim’, it is disgusting, whether it is teams coming to Anfield or going to away grounds. They should be singing about their own team, not a great, historical city that welcomes everyone, when they’ve never been there.
“And on another note, they had a player who was probably their Man of the Match who us a Scouser – Ross Barkley. How ironic is that? He went through a brick wall for them yesterday to get them a draw and the place where he loves, the place where he’s from, they’re mocking.
“It puts it into perspective that most of them won’t even know what they’re singing about, they’ve just seen other teams come to Anfield singing the same songs on the internet. They copy knowing it’ll get a rise out of us when most of them weren’t even born, so it is just a disgrace and I’m sick of it.”
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Aldridge is exactly right – why would these individuals pay good money to attend a Premier League match and spend the duration of it chanting absolute bile, instead of actually supporting the team they pertain to support?
It must be pointed out that the overwhelming majority of spectators at Kenilworth Road were impeccably behaved, and a distinction must be made between genuine Luton fans who’d recoil in horror at such behaviour and simply want their team to win, and the imbeciles who’d nothing better to do than spew disgusting chants.
The ignorance of the latter was highlighted by mocking the place from which Barkley hails. Anyone who initiated or joined in the tragedy chanting can’t be classed as a football fan, as otherwise they’d have known of the midfielder’s roots and steered clear of insulting his city (and him, by association).
Sadly, until such time that actions with proper consequences are taken by the authorities, we’ll still get idiots going to matches and voicing these abhorrent chants, as they know there won’t be any real punishments meted out.
Maybe if points deductions were handed out, that might prompt clubs (and their true supporters) to clamp down on the dregs of society who go to matches with the sole intention of causing hurt to others with their horrible, inexcusable chanting.