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Before the start of this season the FA announced a crackdown on so-called tragedy chanting, where one fanbase taunts another through songs and chants highlighting tragedies affecting their clubs down throughout history.
Liverpool have been targeted through songs and chants reflecting both the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters of the 1980s, in which scores of fans lost their lives on the terraces.
The FA’s new regulations threaten bans and arrests for any supporter committing the “vile form of abuse”.
Following on from the new FA rules, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) published guidance around tragedy chanting. Punishments could include bans from matches and tournaments for offending parties as well as travel restrictions and barring orders from pubs at game time.
Ninety-seven fans were killed at Hillsborough back in April 1989 during an FA Cup semi-final between the Reds and Nottingham Forest.
The Sun newspaper on April 19, 1989 published a false account of the Hillsborough disaster on its front page which wrongly held Liverpool’s own supporters responsible under the headline “The Truth”.
In 2016, an inquest confirmed that all the victims were killed unlawfully.
Still 12 minutes until kick-off and there have already been two brief chants of “Murderers” from a small section of United fans by the tunnel
A Manchester United fan, 33-year-old James White, was handed a four-year football ban last year for wearing a shirt to the FA Cup final defeat against Manchester City which referenced the 97 victims.
Games involving Leeds United and Man United, meanwhile, have been marred throughout the years with tragedy chanting.
One refers to the two Leeds fans who were killed in Istanbul during a trip for a UEFA Cup semi-final tie against Galatasaray in 2000, the other to the 1958 Munich Air Disaster, in which 23 players, staff and crew died after Manchester United’s plane carrying the team slipped off the runway at the Munich-Riem airport on the way back from a European Cup trip to Red Star Belgrade.
