Spare us the bullsh*t! Petty Liverpool-Man City rivalry shows football needs to grow up

Firstly, let’s get a few things straight.

Throwing coins at an opposition manager, or player, or fans, is wrong, unacceptable, and anyone found to have done so should face the consequences of their actions.

Likewise anyone found to have damaged a team bus, be it with a coin, a bottle, a stone or any other missile, is completely out of line. It is not big, it is not clever, and there is no justification. None whatsoever.

And if those feel like rather unnecessary points to make – I mean, who would ever think it was okay to launch coins or smash windscreens at a football match? – then wait until you hear the next one.

Singing about human tragedy, events in which scores of people lost their lives and where others have spent decades dealing with the aftereffects, in a bid to score points at a sporting contest, is abhorrent. It is not only disgusting, but weird too. What possesses a person to delve into such dark places, and to seemingly revel in doing so?

Liverpool’s win over Manchester City at Anfield on Sunday was, in many ways, the perfect advert for Premier League football: a game of intensity, passion and skill, played between two teams that have raised the bar in English football across recent years.

It had everything you could wish for; tension, drama, controversy, shifts in momentum and a plot which kept you hanging on until the very end. It was settled by a goal of sheer, undiluted brilliance, and played amid a frenzied, febrile atmosphere.

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And yet the fallout centres not Mohamed Salah’s genius or Virgil van Dijk’s return to form. It hasn’t been about Erling Haaland or Kevin De Bruyne or Bernardo Silva. It hasn’t even been about the referee and the VAR – not really, anyway.

Instead, what we have seen is the latest chapter in a ‘rivalry’ which is plumbing new depths in terms of nastiness and pettiness, and which needs a significant, and swift, injection of common sense from both clubs to prevent further escalation.

You’ll have seen the headlines by now. City are, quite rightly, unhappy that objects were thrown in the direction of manager Pep Guardiola during the game, and say that their team coach was damaged on its way out of Anfield. It is not the first time they have encountered such issues on Merseyside, either.

As for Liverpool, well, they’re “deeply disappointed” by the vile chants which were heard from the away end during Sunday’s game, and by the graffiti which was left behind on the concourse afterwards. You know what they are, and what they relate to.

Liverpool say they will work with the relevant authorities, and with Manchester City, to ensure that action is taken, and have also condemned those supporters who targeted Guardiola and his coaching staff with missiles. Stadium bans are a certainty, if and when the culprits are identified.

Quite right, too. There is no place in the game for such behaviour, and Liverpool are right to condemn it publicly.

City’s response, meanwhile, reflects a little less favourably.

The club has, surprisingly, chosen not to comment publicly on any of the flashpoints, instead choosing to privately suggest to journalists that Klopp’s pre-game comments, in which he compared the financial capabilities of the two clubs and suggested Liverpool “could not compete” with City in terms of bringing in players, may have stoked tensions between supporters.

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Pathetic, quite frankly. If City truly believe that, then we are in dangerous territory, where any perceived slight against a club offers a green light to supporters, enabling them to behave as they wish, a defence of ‘yeah, but what about…’ in their back pockets.

Was Klopp to blame, one wonders, back in April, when City fans – and plenty of them – disrupted a minute’s silence in memory of Hillsborough at the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley? Maybe it was Guardiola who provoked Liverpool fans into damaging City’s bus ahead of the Champions League meeting at Anfield in 2018?

No, no, and no again. You do not justify repugnant behaviour by pointing at others, or by pointing at the badge on your chest.

Football rivalry is one thing, human decency is quite another. Why can the two seemingly no longer coexist?

There will, doubtless, be comments in response to this article pointing out past examples of poor behaviour from Liverpool fans and Manchester City fans, from Manchester United and Everton supporters, Arsenal and Chelsea. That’s the default position these days, it seems: yeah, but. They did this, so we do that.

The sad fact is that it’s time the game, and its supporters, started acting like grown ups. It’s time the Hillsborough and the Heysel and the Munich chants stopped. Period. People died. People’s lives were taken, and many more were changed forever. They were human beings, you’re a human being. Act like it.

It’s time managers and players showed a bit of maturity and perspective, too. We admire passion and intensity, but at what point do we get a bit of common sense as well?

Klopp’s red card for berating assistant referee Gary Beswick on Sunday, for example, was both deserved and indefensible, whatever your allegiance. It sets a dreadful example, at a time when referee abuse at grass-roots level in England has reached crisis point.

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The same goes for Guardiola, who spent part of Sunday taunting the fans in Anfield’s Main Stand, and for the likes of Mikel Arteta, whose touchline antics are becoming ever more absurd.

The same goes for every manager of every club, in fact. Those who seek to use their post-match interviews, lapped up by their army of loyal supporters and amplified, let’s be honest, by a complicit media, to point fingers at referees and assistants, deflecting and distorting and helping create animosity and paranoia.

The same goes for every player, at every club, who dives, who ‘exaggerates contact’, who protests a decision with the demeanour of a child denied a bedtime treat.

We get it, you 'care', you have “passion', but please, spare us the bullsh*t. You’re adults.

In the end, all these things, these petty 'talking points' serve to do is distract us. From the game itself, and from the many, many serious issues within it.

We focus on chants and coins and press conference quotes, while fans are left fearing for their lives at a Champions League final.

We stoke the flames of a manufactured rivalry while a mental health crisis engulfs young footballers. We scream about refereeing bias and VAR decisions while discrimination and abuse goes on around us.

It’s time we all took a look at ourselves.

Because if Sunday’s game proved anything, it’s not that Salah’s great or that Haaland’s human, that Klopp cares and that Pep cares, that Liverpool are good and City are bad, or vice versa.

It’s that football, as a sport, needs to grow up.