Rangers fans

[crowie]

Suggestions that the big screen in Picadilly Gardens was pulled for fans own safety.

From another forum - a stewards point of view....

"Ive just got back from Manchester now. The firm i have just joined where doing event security for the game. Until we arrived this afternoon, we didnt realise that we where actually working on the fan parks in the city centre.

We got given high vis jackets then I was posted with 6 others to one of the gates at Picadilly Square Fan Park at around half 5. The crowds where unbelieveable, reminicent of Tacksim and Syntagma square for us, except in a much smaller area. Our job was to stop people entering with glass bottles. Bearing in mind this was my first ever shift, it was quite daunting. Alot of the people who i had to challenge for bottles where sound, had no objections because we provided plastic cups for them to enter their bottles in to. But there was alot of froth aswell, ***** out of their faces who had none of it. I asked one big feller to empty his bottle in to a cup, very politely, and i was told to *****. I then went over to him again, and he ***** me in the chest, i asked him again with a plastic cup in my hand for him and he threw me in to a fence. ***** this, i dont get paid enough for this ***** so i left him.

It was clear by then the sqaure was becoming dangerously overcrowded. Our gate was getting crushed, and we where pulled away by police for our own safety. We where moved further up to the entrance of the square, where barriers where accross preventing people from entering because it was too full. A lot of lads tried to get through, and the vast majority where sound about it and good natured with me. I had many a conversation with jocks when they noticed my scouse accent and realised i wasnt a manc. My advice to them was to find a pub before the rush, which went against what we where told to tell them which was to head for the fan park at the ground. I knew theyd have ***** there so i didnt tell them that. No problems whatsoever at this point.

Then about 20mins before kick off, an older scots feller came over to me and said hoow dangerously crowded it was in the square, he said "someone was going to get killed", and thats why he left. He also said to me "mark my words, there will be a riot in there". I had those suspicions myself. From my experience of Istanbul and Athens, you can tell when something is not right, and i definately sensed that then.

We then hit quarter to 8, and the square is rammed with Rangers fans, singing and watching the big screen for the adverts to end and the game to start. By 5 to 8, still no game. Then a supervisor gets it over his radio that they werent showing it. I couldnt believe it. My words to him where "there will be absolute ***** murder here, its ***** suicide". Jocks where coming over asking us what was going on, and we had to tell them. They where understandabely ***** fumin. I tried to tell them that i totally agreed with them, and that it was a ***** disgrace. Some where sound with me, recognising it wasnt our fault as event stewards. But then as people started to twig on what was going on, it started getting nasty.

There was about 15 of us on this gate with a few police near by, and the scots where fuming with us. Coming over, pushing us, screaming in our faces. What could we do? I agreed with every word they said, id be ***** fuming aswell, but it had ***** all to do with us. Then it got quite serious, bottles where being thrown, passing just past my face and lads where getting really aggresive with us. It was then when our head office told us to pull out, and the police moved us down a side street. We where getting dogs abuse, bottles thrown down at us, everything. Obviously the fact we where in uniform attracted it.

Then our supervisor said they had to try and move us in to one of the portacabins back in the middle of the sqaure. We walked through as a group, through thousands of scots who where going crazy, throwing all kinds, screaming in our faces. We eventually had to take our jackets off and run. When we made it to this portacabin, all hell was going off around us. Riot police where coming from everywhere, and hundreds of rangers fans where charging them. Bus shelter where ripped down, and metal and wooden poles used as weapons to charge the police. The place was totally trashed. A bottle landed right next to me which had been thrown from someone. This went on for 3hours solid until 11 oclock. We had to take off all jackets and ties, and when it quietened down about half 11 we where able to make way to our coach at the GMex. Back at the coach we heard a Russian had been stabbed aswell.

People have said that the big screen in our square had a technical fault and thats why the match wasnt shown. I know for a fact that is *****. It wasnt shown because of the shear numbers in the sqaure. The reasoning was that if Rangers scored, there would be bedlam. But whichever thick ***** makes these decisions obviously didnt realise the implications of not showing the game. If they wherent going to show it, they shouldve informed everyone at 6 o clock and give people time to fine somewhere else, not at ***** kick off. Its an absolute disgrace, and so typical of UEFA event. I couldve organised it better, it was a sham. They totally underestimated the amount of scots that would travel. Logical thing to do would be to put a big screen in old Trafford and let people watch it there, then there wouldve been no bother. 2 ***** ***** fan parks was never going to be enough. I could see it, everyone else could, why cant the ****** organisers of these events? Useless *****, heads should ***** role after tonight.

Ive spoke to my dad and others who've said that the news have reported it as small disturbances with a hand full of Rangers fans clashing with the police. Thats absolute *****, total *****. There where ****** hundreds, if not more, and this went on for hours right in front of my eyes. To be fair, the amount of Scots lads who made the effort to come over and speak to us while this was going on, simply saying "sorry" was amazing. I spoke to a feller who made the effort to come over to us when he seen us having all kinds thrown in our direction, and he just apologised on behalf of Rangers fans, and said what a disgrace and embarrasment it was. I know from experience that its always a minority who are froth, and tar everyone with the same brush. But thats what happened, anything you hear otherwise is *****, i ***** seen it with my own eyes. Rangers fans had every right to be ***** with what happened in that square, but the actions of some afterwards, the rioting for 2 hours, was inexcusable. And it wasnt a "handfull" either."

[MickeyPaul]

Interesting reading.

It wasnt shown because of the shear numbers in the sqaure. The reasoning was that if Rangers scored, there would be bedlam.

How in the name of God could any sane person think that would be worse or more dangerous than not showing it? Seems crazy. Especially, as the fella said, right at kick off.

[crowie]

Agree that it certainly wasn't the best decision Mickey, if true, but they obviously felt there was a serious risk to life last night if Rangers had scored or there had been any major crowd incident.

While the behaviour was out of hand in the end no one died. The same might not be true if the game had been shown at the Picc Gardens screens.

Serious bother or deaths, would rather have the bother I think.

[pistol984]

Just read that Manchester have decided to scrap plans to show the Champion League final on big screens in the city due to the trouble last night.

Shame for the Man Utd fans but I guess they'll be tucked up nice and warm with their prawn sandwiches anyways.

[all_funkt_up]

Listen, the laws of the land state no one can drink in the streets ok? So the Police turn a blind eye to 12 hours of drinking and then act suprised when men get drunk and get larey.

It was exactly the same in Athens last year. The authorities allowed beer to be sold without making any provision at all for toilets. Then they act disgusted when people piss in the streets. If you invite thousands of people to a place to drink and dont provide adequate facilities there are inevitable consequences.

In my opinion, you go two ways - you say from the off that no fans without tickets should travel. You turn away coaches with ticketless fans, you enforce an alcohol embargo in the city centre from early on - word soon spreads and the place wouldnt have filled up. If all the super markets, offies and pubs were banned from selling alcohol - none of this would have happened. If the police had confiscated alcohol from people drinking, before the masses showed up and much ale had been consumed already - again none of this would have happened.

Or the second alternative is to say "anything goes", we know they are going to get pissed so we have to work out a strategy to deal with the inevitable.

Instead we have a half arsed situation where council leaders are on telly moaning about piles of rubbish etc. Whose fucking idea was it to invite 100'000 football fans to a city and not put out any fucking bins you bell end councillor good for nothing cunt?!!?

They knew all along this many would travel and they knew there would be pissed Jocks all over the shop.

Thank god they werent playing Everton or Spurs or it would have been twice as bad.

[keemanan]

Instead we have a half arsed situation where council leaders are on telly moaning about piles of rubbish etc. Whose fucking idea was it to invite 100'000 football fans to a city and not put out any fucking bins you bell end councillor good for nothing cunt?!!?

Nobody was 'invited' , the council took a view to deal as best they could with a situation that no police force or local administration could ever control.
Why the fuk are you defending the disgracefull behavoir of the drunken Rangers hooligans?

In my opinion, you go two ways - you say from the off that no fans without tickets should travel. You turn away coaches with ticketless fans, you enforce an alcohol embargo in the city centre from early on - word soon spreads and the place wouldnt have filled up. If all the super markets, offies and pubs were banned from selling alcohol - none of this would have happened. If the police had confiscated alcohol from people drinking, before the masses showed up and much ale had been consumed already - again none of this would have happened.

Tell me how on earth you police that?
Stop all cars heading towards the city?
Your being ridiculous

There is no excuse for their behavoir , the police were not heavy handed although this made me laugh even though it's cruel




mummy



I dont however taint all Scottish fans with the same brush as England fans are, I'm sure the other teams fans are embarrased by all this.

I wouldn't have been so mithered by it all had I not seen Rangers fans blamimg Manchester for them rioting and stabbing

[keemanan]

Who on earth can handle that? Half of them pissed since 10am

Manchester is a working city and word went round to welcome our visitors and be turn a blind eye to unsocial behavoir such as drinkng in the streets as a way of creating a non intimidatory atmosphere.

well them cnuts took the piss big style and this has now resulted in Utd fans not being able to watch the Cup final in their own city and create a night to remember, yes I hate manure but I dont begrudge them nights like that.
Shame on Rangers

[jtw1]

Shame on the City's powers that-be imo . What the feck did they expect letting people drink for 8-9 hours before kick-off !

But the ban for next week is a typical over-reaction imo .
Last nights events will in no way be replicated for the CL final as what you will have , i think , is most people going from work to the big screens and then enjoying themselves rather than being tanked up from the early hours .

Fingers crossed they will overturn their decision .

[crowie]

Originally Posted by all_funkt_up

Listen, the laws of the land state no one can drink in the streets ok? So the Police turn a blind eye to 12 hours of drinking and then act suprised when men get drunk and get larey.

So what do you think the police should have done? Arrest 150,000+ people? Where do you hold them. Christ they would still be processing all the paper work next Xmas.

I will say it again, the numbers were uncontrollable and unmanageable. No one could have successfully controlled that volume of people and ensured they all abided by the law.

Originally Posted by all_funkt_up

If you invite thousands of people to a place to drink and dont provide adequate facilities there are inevitable consequences.

Will say it again....they weren't invited. The word until last week was don't travel without a ticket. And when they realised that this advice was going to be ignored they had to do something.

The fanzones were last minute, again possibly why there wasn't adequate toilets/rubbish facilities in place, but can you imagine if Manc CC had stuck to their guns and put nothing on?

You would have had 120,000+ fans wandering the streets with no where to watch the game.....it would have been far worse than what Wednesday night actually turned out.

Originally Posted by all_funkt_up

You turn away coaches with ticketless fans, you enforce an alcohol embargo in the city centre from early on - word soon spreads and the place wouldnt have filled up. If all the super markets, offies and pubs were banned from selling alcohol - none of this would have happened. If the police had confiscated alcohol from people drinking, before the masses showed up and much ale had been consumed already - again none of this would have happened.

That first bit sounds about as half arsed a solution as your suggesting Manc CC put in place.

Turn away coaches with ticketless fans?? Do you think all the coaches were split nicely into those with tickets and those without? Practically every coach had a handful with tickets and a large % without. Do you then turn away the coach, stop those with tickets attending, make those without tickets get off the coach and walk back home, up the motorway??


And remember this is Manchester, there is probably about 20+ routes into it, and don't assume that all fans were simply coming down in the one route from Glasgow. So what do you do, have roadblocks at every route into the city....inspect every single car. What impact does that have on Joe Public who is just going about his/her daily business? Plus this is the UK, not Burma or China or North Korea, people are allowed to travel from one point to another in this country without police intereference.


As for stopping the supermarkets selling alcohol....well do you not think they sell drink in Scotland? Fans would bring it with them. And you don't have the manpower to control every single place selling alcohol in Greater Manchester. Plus Manc is truely the land of the "opportunist". I have heard stories of dodgy geezers selling slabs of cans out of the back of transit vans near the fanzones, at a premium of course. That would still happen, only in greater volume.


At all the Scotland away games I have been to the most pissed I have ever seen the entire support was in Bari........where they had a booze ban on the day of the game! Folk bought the day before, little bars opened up, sold booze, were closed by the police, opened again when the police went away. Everyone was melted simply because people bought vodka and wine instead of lager because you didn't want to be humping 24 cans about with you. As they say in Jurrasic Park....life will find a way.....well in regards to Scots and drink........we would find a way.



Your suggestions would be fine if you were talking about controlling a small number of fans. But you would really need approx 50,000 police to control the numbers involved and police every single law that you suggest. I think there was something like 2,000 on plus an extra 300 drafted in, about 1 policeman for every 65 fans...... Its just not controllable.

[Winrew]

Will say it again....they weren't invited. The word until last week was don't travel without a ticket. And when they realised that this advice was going to be ignored they had to do something.
The fanzones were last minute, again possibly why there wasn't adequate toilets/rubbish facilities in place, but can you imagine if Manc CC had stuck to their guns and put nothing on?
You would have had 120,000+ fans wandering the streets with no where to watch the game.....it would have been far worse than what Wednesday night actually turned out.

Excellent point Crowie.
Just a quick question , why is it that the fans need to get off their head on keg ?

[rcgills]

Originally Posted by Winrew

Just a quick question , why is it that the fans need to get off their head on keg ?

Because when your team's been boring the living daylights out of everyone throughout the competition, beer goggles inevitably come in handy.

I speak as a Gillingham fan and therefore an expert in such matters, obviously

[Parahandy]

It's a free country and Manchester CC eventually realised there was no feasible way of preventing a massive number of people from converging on the City. They certainly didn't want to be faced with managing a situation like this but as the law stands, had little or no option. A few observations.

Police did not have or could have reasonably been expected to draft in the resources needed to control the numbers and enforce the law. A temporary lifting of Drinking in Public Places legislation was the only thing that could be done.

Fanzones were set up to cater for around 25,000 people each as I understand it. Not sure if there 3 or 4 of these, in any event nowhere near enough to accommodate the number of people. Overcrowding is dangerous and crushing is deadly as we've tragically seen in the past in football.

In some ways the venue was too near Scotland and I've had first hand accounts from real Rangers fans just returned from Manchester, I spoke to in my local last night. They went to have a good drink and see the game, tickets or not. Yes, actually SEE THE GAME, not be lying blotto in the fanzones and elsewhere from early on Wednesday morning.

The majority of the 200,000 in Manchester were not regular Rangers supporters. Rangers have around 42,000 season ticket holders and there is rarely trouble at Ibrox. Their hard core away support are largely a different following from those at home matches and there are more troublesome incidents in and around away grounds. From what I was told last night there was an element travelling who never normally go to games and they were looking for trouble with anybody, including Rangers fans.

English football has had major problems with football hooliganism for a long time and I would be very surprised if there was not some degree of organised violence involving groups from north and south of the border.

The way I see it Manchester CC had no chance, the police had no chance and to blame either party is outrageous. The mindless idiots attacking police and even each other, overturning cars etc etc were the sole cause of the trouble.

There is talk in the press this morning of preventing ticketless fans from being allowed anywhere near cities where big matches are played in future but quite how that can be enforced is another matter altogether and would be an administrative and operational nightmare.

One final comment on a subject already mentioned. I agree completely that if there were sufficient police officers at this event arrests would at least have been counted in hundreds.

[Yen_Sid]

A lot of very good points, some maybe not so good. Personally I think it was disgraceful, and seeing the pictures on tv and in the press is, as a Gers fan my self, very embarassing. Those morons chasing the police, kicking cars etc should be named/shamed banned for life and probably even a jail sentence. No excuse for that regardless of any of the circumstances mentioned in this thread. Shouldn't be too difficult to put names to the majority of the thugs as there are some pretty good close up shots etc. Personally I'd be surprised if most of them are "regular" Rangers fans, either way though it is unacceptable and hopefully will be dealt with accordingly. Rangers have had a good name for years now with regard to travelling fans, now it's all out the window due to a small amount of clowns. Shameful ..

[crowie]

Originally Posted by Parahandy

In some ways the venue was too near Scotland .

Thats spot on Andy.

Celtic took 80,000 to Seville and there were little more than a handful of individual incident. I don't think there were any arrests. Thats not said as a point scoring "we're better than you" comment, its just to prove that large numbers, of Scots, can go away without their being trouble. In fact thats the norm and Wednesday was the exception...and that by and large includes Rangers bar a couple of incidents in Villareal and Osasuna.


But Manchester was probably the worst venue possible for this final in terms of Rangers being in it. Seville was at least overseas and your average brain dead ned would have trouble working out how to get there. Plus there was a significant cost in doing so. These two things alone would put of the bammers amongst the Celtic support, or rather to re-phrase that, the bammers who support Celtic.



Manchester and any able bodied erse who can pilot a car was on his way south. It was too easy to get too. Hell a couple of my mates in Dunbar were working Wednesday morning, both blue noses, turned to each other and said "WTF are we doing here?", jumped in the car and headed south. I was very surprised to get a text from one of them at 6.30pm saying he was in a pub in Salford! Phoned him and even then he was saying it was carnage at the fanzones, was a bad atmosphere and there was Rangers fans fighting with each other. They decided to piss of out of the centre and actually see the game in a bar.



What was left was a large-ish minority of neds who were smashed out of their heads on anything alcoholic. The screen going down was the one flashpoint they needed to kick off. If it hadn't been that it would probably have been the Zenit goal.



I have read a good handful of first hand accounts now, from genuine Rangers fans on the Scotland board, decent lads. They all tell the same story...atmosphere changing from party mood to ugly before the game, too many people too out of it on bevvy, fanzones over crowded and dangerous. Put that together and there was always a high chance of trouble. Unfortunately thats what happened.


Thing is 3 fanzones at 25,000 a piece should have possibly been adequate. 30,000 Rangers fans in the stadium, 70,000 outside in the fanzones and bars. I just think that no one accounted for another 75,000 on top of that travelling.

Originally Posted by Yen_Sid

Those morons chasing the police, kicking cars etc should be named/shamed banned for life and probably even a jail sentence.

Ed,

I would doubt that many/any of those in bother were actually ticket holders at Rangers, and your probably lucky if they have ever seen the inside of Ibrox.

However a few months inside wouldn't do them any harm.

[crowie]

Originally Posted by keemanan

I'm sure the other teams fans are embarrased by all this.

To be honest Keem, the first hand reports from the Rangers fans on the Scotland board has everyone of them saying the same thing - embarrassed, gutted by the behaviour, shamed, pissed them off and actually took the gloss of getting to the final. No one wants to talk about the final or the run to it now, they all want to talk about the bother....and thats what it will now be remembered for.

As for me being embarressed, well not me personally, they were not my people, not my fans. If you know Rangers then a fair % of their fans thrive on the "We're not Scottish, we're British" attitude, they like to see themselves apart from the rest of Scotland. Its the "WE are the people" view from them. Not all of them mind, there are many decent Rangers fans, its just some of them. I know a lot of the chat from Manc has labelled this a Scottish problem, IMO its not, its a Rangers problem. Different from Celtic or Hibs or Hearts or Scotland.

Originally Posted by Winrew

Excellent point Crowie.
Just a quick question , why is it that the fans need to get off their head on keg ?

Win,

No idea. Its just a Scottish "trait" I think. We like a drink. Hard to explain why exactly. For example I can go weeks on end without a drink, not going out at weekend, not drinking in the house. But go to the football and I like a drink before and after the game. Can go away to a Scotland game, Paris for example, was out at 11 in the morning drinking on day of the game....that was me through to 4 in the following morning bar the game itself and getting to and from it. I just like a drink with my mates. Big difference however is that while I am not a big drinker I can pace myself and not go over the score. As can many others I usually go with. No one gets into the falling down, don't know where you are state. Unfortunately some people do.

Basically its like a party...and everyone has a drink at a party.