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When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

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    When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

    The rivalry between the two clubs has been done to death on here and elsewhere over the past few years, but was there a definitve moment which changed the rivalry from good natured to downright nasty? Or was it more of a gradual evolution?

    The rivalry between the two cities was supposedly kick-started by the building of the Manchester Ship Canal and the subsequent by-passing of Liverpool, but the football tribalism seems to be a more recent development.

    It was well known in the '60s that some Liverpool players would go to Old Trafford to watch matches if they weren't playing themselves, likewise Man U players were sometimes seen at Anfield. Good natured bantering ensued.

    Tommy Docherty mentions in his autobiog that after United had beaten Liverpool in the FA cup final of 1977, the United fans sang in support of Liverpool and wished them well in their EC final against Borussia Moenchengladbach the following Wednesday.

    It's difficult to see a similar thing happening now. So what contributed to the change?

    #2
    When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

    historyman wrote:
    Tommy Docherty mentions in his autobiog that after United had beaten Liverpool in the FA cup final of 1977, the United fans sang in support of Liverpool and wished them well in their EC final against Borussia Moenchengladbach the following Wednesday.
    That sounds a bit rose-tinted to me. Possibly a moment it became really nasty was the ammonia attack on the Manchester United players at Anfield as they left the team bus. Clayton Blackmore was badly hit, if I remember correctly. Must've been in 1984 or 1985.

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      #3
      When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

      There's a famous picture of a United fan at Anfield with a dart stuck in the bridge of his nose. I think that was taken in 77ish.

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        #4
        When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

        might it have happened when both teams developed their own rather unpleasant set of hooligans some time in the 70's?

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          #5
          When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

          The ammonia incident happened in the 85/86 season I think. The season before the two had played each other in the FA Cup Semi-Final. Both the first game at Goodison and the replay at Maine Road were the scene for some spectacular violence by all accounts.

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            #6
            When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

            I was just going to post on the 1985 semi. It finished 2-2 and there was considerable fighting in the stands and outside the ground. Segregation was very weak, bordering on non-existent.

            I know one United supporter and one Liverpool supporter who were at the Goodison game but each decided not to go to the Maine Road replay as a result.

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              #7
              When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

              historyman wrote:

              Tommy Docherty mentions ...
              Yeah, there's probably not much point in continuing with any anecdote that begins with those 3 words to be honest.

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                #8
                When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                ooh aah wrote:
                historyman wrote:

                Tommy Docherty mentions ...
                Yeah, there's probably not much point in continuing with any anecdote that begins with those 3 words to be honest.
                Heh, I know what you mean. But even allowing for an expected bit of artisitc licence I don't doubt that many of the Man U fans were chanting in support of Liverpool.

                According to The Doc they were chanting 'Good Luck Liverpool' to the tune of 'Nice One Cyril.'

                How times have changed.

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                  #9
                  When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                  Erics Inner Monologue wrote:
                  There's a famous picture of a United fan at Anfield with a dart stuck in the bridge of his nose. I think that was taken in 77ish.
                  Ooh, I was at that game. I would have put it at 79, but couldn't be sure. Liverpool won 3-1.

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                    #10
                    When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                    The dart picture is here if anyone wants to see it.

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                      #11
                      When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                      it doesn't look real. It looks like the dart was thrown at a photo, and then someone took a photo of that

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                        #12
                        When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                        Decent, albeit biased potted history of the rivalry here: (from a 4-4-2 article)

                        Tune in to any national football phone-in and the one thing that unites almost every caller is their dislike of Manchester United. Norwich hate them. Leeds, Arsenal, West Ham – they’ve all got a beef with the The World’s Favourite Football Team, as have, it seems, Luton Town, S****horpe and three quarters of the Combined Conference of Outer Mongolia. Truly, no one likes them. And what do United think of their position as public enemy number one? They don’t care, they’re far too concerned with Liverpool.

                        Manchester United and Liverpool have a rivalry so embedded in our respective cultures that the mutual antipathy is almost genetic. To Liverpool fans, our cousins down the East Lancs are the only team we measure ourselves against. Apart from our twice-a season battle with Everton, no other fixture can compare in the sheer intensity of feeling that the United match generates. The rest of the country may despise Man Utd, but their hatred comes basically from jealousy and insecurity. Ours is historical.

                        The cities of Liverpool and Manchester were rivals long before Newton Heath left the glamour of the Lancashire & Yorkshire railway and changed their name to Manchester United. Liverpool, as the port of the 19th Century industrial north west, was an international hub, a gateway to the world where Chinese, Africans, Irish, Welsh and migrating Lancastrians lived cheek by jowl, forging an accent and identity at odds with the country around it.

                        Manchester, on the other hand, was Lancashire’s manufacturing base – a town of downtrodden weavers and cigar-chomping mill owners, of smoking factories and hellish furnaces that made the cotton magnates and merchants very rich men. Even in those days, Manchester resented the cosmopolitan port down the River Mersey, building a ship canal just so goods wouldn’t have to go through Liverpool. In 1893, the two towns were given Lord Mayor status by Queen Victoria at exactly the same time onthe same day, just so one wouldn’t have something on the other. Mancunians have always had an obsession with bettering themselves (witness the ludicrous Olympic bid, the ‘Milan Of the North’ tag), in the hope that one day the world will finally forget their beginnings as a mill town on the other side of the Irwell from Salford.

                        Liverpool and United matches were always full-blooded affairs but it was only when the Red Devils gained promotion from the old Division Two in the 1970s that things started getting really nasty. Here were Liverpool, winning everything in sight – literally everything - and yet our achievements were glossed over by the northern media in favour of Jimmy Grennhoff’s holiday romance tips or yet another documentary about the lives and loves of Joe Jordan. Like some mini-Stalinist state, United heralded their puny achievements in the same way that Soviet TV proudly announced the latest productivity results from the combine harvester factories of Siberia. Liverpool, despite our monumental, unequalled success were rubbed out of history and confined to the salt mines by the Mancunian politburo and their media cronies. No wonder we hated them. Dave Cottrell, former editor of the official Liverpool FC magazine, explains:

                        “All the wrong kind of celebrities seemed to support them. And Granada
                        TV in the late 70s was like an unofficial Manchester United supporters
                        club. Tony Wilson wore a Bruges rosette on TV on the day of the 1978
                        European Cup final. Or so I was told, because I was at Wembley watching my team crowned European champions again while he was telling the north west about a pensioner with a talking pond in Hulme.”

                        On the pitch United were simply not in the same class as Liverpool. The likes of Dalglish, Souness and Ray Kennedy ensured that the League title was a permanent fixture in the Anfield trophy room, often kept company by the European Cup. United though, were a bit of a bogey team for the Reds, in much the same way as we are to them today. Our FA Cup meetings were particluarly disastrous with defeats in the ‘77 final and ‘79 and ‘85 semis, as Liverpool legend Ian Rush, recalls.

                        “United in the 80s were a good cup team and we were dominating the league so there was big rivalry and a bit more needle as neither set of supporters wanted to lose. The games against United were hard-fought. You didn't have to be a local boy like Sammy Lee to know what it meant on the terraces and that meant you did try that extra 20% in those games.”

                        These were the dark days of Munich ’58 and Shankly ’81 chants, when Bryan Robson and Norman Whiteside were the hated symbols of our most detested rivals. Even today, when hooliganism is supposedly on the increase, nothing compares to the absolute enmity between Liverpool and Manchester United during those days. As a city, Liverpool was hit terribly by the policies of Thatcher, a blackspot of unemployment vilified for its supposed self-pity by government and media alike. A fact that Mancunians, seemingly oblivious to the plight of their own town, took great pleasure in. In an atmosphere like this, it came as little surprise that violence between the two sets of fans increased. Dave Cottrell:

                        “I remember a large group of United fans smuggling themselves into the Kop, it must have been around 1985, and being cornered in one of the old 'pulpits' at the side. Loads of shady-looking Kopites worked their way over to them, and next thing the bottles starting flying along with chants of ‘There's only one way out’ before the police moved in.”

                        Post-Heysel and later, Hillsborough, much of the violence subsided. Maybe those involved in the aggro looked at what was happening and stepped back from the abyss. The house culture of the late 80s also had a hand in calming things down a bit, but a rivalry like the one between Liverpool and Man Utd is not so easily extinguished - as recent battles have shown. However, even the most ardent Liverpool fan has to admit that United’s football over the last ten years has been fantastic to watch. For once, they actually deserve some of the hype. Liverpool author, Kevin Sampson:

                        “Personally, I don't really hate them at all at the moment. They play bold, attacking football. They take risks. How can a Liverpool fan resent a team that wins things by playing the right way? ****, but I'd love to see a team of ours play like that. I'm even getting to quite like Ferguson. I was made up with the way he humiliated that bloodless freak Wenger. I'd take the demented Ferguson ahead of cool, sophisticated Wenger any day.”

                        Form many people, the problem with United is that they lack both humility in victory and graciousness in defeat. They moan about the ref, they refuse to praise the other side, their opponents are either ‘lucky’ or they’ve been ‘cheated’. During the glory days of Shanks and Paisley, Liverpool never inspired the same level of uniform national distaste. With a little more humility Manchester United could earn the respect that their football undoubtedly deserves, but in the red half Merseyside, they’ll always be our bitterest rivals, no matter how good their football is. And that’s how we both like it.

                        Without this antipathy, without our centuries–old rivalry, then the teams of Liverpool and Manchester United are simply 22 highly-paid athletes kicking a ball about for the benefit of a billion global armchair fans. There’ll always be skirmishes between the two sets of fans and losing to them will never stop being unbearable, because the game’s greatest fixtures – and this is one of them – are about a lot more than football. They’re about regional pride, a sense of place and the need we all have for a defined enemy to measure ourselves against. For Frazier and Ali, read Liverpool and United. With the gloves are off.

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                          #13
                          When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                          Slightly biased.

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                            #14
                            When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                            Hahahaha. Mint.

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                              #15
                              When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                              Here were Liverpool, winning everything in sight – literally everything - and yet our achievements were glossed over by the northern media in favour of Jimmy Grennhoff’s holiday romance tips or yet another documentary about the lives and loves of Joe Jordan.
                              Literally everyting!

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                                #16
                                When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                                ooh aah wrote:
                                it doesn't look real. It looks like the dart was thrown at a photo, and then someone took a photo of that
                                Yep,and surely you would just pull it out.....

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                                  #17
                                  When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                                  My obvious bias notwithstanding, everything I have read about the rivalry portrays Liverpool fans as the more aggressive party. Dart- and ammonia-attacks, hurting United players in attacks on team-busses, spitting at United's manager, cheering Alan Smith's broken leg and allegedly shaking the ambulance that took him to hospital, plus the treatment of Evra...

                                  And Liverpool's own fanzine editor in moolag's article can't find any greater provocation than "United were popular when Liverpool were successful".

                                  I find that very odd. What kind of aggression from United fans -- and we know that their hooligan element in the '70s was aming the worst in England -- which would have justified teambus attacks, throwing darts and spitting at managers?

                                  It's a genuine question.

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                                    #18
                                    When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                                    Defensive minded wrote:
                                    "and we know that their hooligan element in the '70s was aming the worst in England"

                                    This may be true, but it's an odd thing to say on a thread about rivalry between Man Utd and Liverpool. I remember that my parents wouldn't allow me to go to Elland Road to watch Man Utd play because of the reputation of their fans.
                                    United have always had one of the larger if not largest hooligan followings in England, assuming thats whose reputation you were referring to.

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                                      #19
                                      When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                                      Defensive minded wrote:
                                      Manchester United - I lived in Leeds and it was the reputation of their away fans that scared my parents.
                                      We're singing from the same hymn sheet then.

                                      Re. the article moolag quoted, the historical rivalry between the two cities cannot be as big a factor (in the development of the club rivalry) as he lets on surely? Otherwise Liverpool-City games would be just as intense, likewise Utd-Everton.

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                                        #20
                                        When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                                        El Tel wrote:
                                        Defensive minded wrote:
                                        Manchester United - I lived in Leeds and it was the reputation of their away fans that scared my parents.
                                        We're singing from the same hymn sheet then.

                                        Re. the article moolag quoted, the historical rivalry between the two cities cannot be as big a factor (in the development of the club rivalry) as he lets on surely? Otherwise Liverpool-City games would be just as intense, likewise Utd-Everton.
                                        Liverpool never really had / has a big hooligan element or 'firm' in the way Utd did.

                                        Re; the article: a lot of it is clearly tongue in cheek but it's true that when United came back up into the first division is when the antagonism between the two clubs started in 'earnest'.

                                        Coincidentally this was the same time that United's 'Red Army' started getting their reputation. I think you can probably find your answer there.

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                                          #21
                                          When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                                          Well, no. You'll have to spell it out. Is it that Liverpool fans hated United for getting attention and because United hooligans caused trouble with Liverpool fans? Surely there must be more to it than that.

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                                            #22
                                            When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                                            moolag wrote:

                                            Liverpool never really had / has a big hooligan element or 'firm' in the way Utd did.

                                            Re; the article: a lot of it is clearly tongue in cheek but it's true that when United came back up into the first division is when the antagonism between the two clubs started in 'earnest'.

                                            Coincidentally this was the same time that United's 'Red Army' started getting their reputation. I think you can probably find your answer there.
                                            Right enough, Man U were banned from Europe in 1977 after their fans caused trouble in St. Etienne.

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                                              #23
                                              When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                                              We weren't banned from Europe. We just had to play our home tie 200 miles away from Manchester, or something equally daft. Ended up being at Plymouth, I think.

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                                                #24
                                                When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                                                They were thrown out (that news report was from a few days after the match), and then reinstated upon appeal but told to play the match at least 200 miles from Old Trafford.

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                                                  #25
                                                  When Did Liverpool vs Man U Turn Nasty?

                                                  Note also that Angela Rippon refers to the club solely as "Manchester".

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