Violence in Football

Violence has become a very topical issue over the last few weeks after the altercations between West Ham and Chelsea fans during the teams EFL Cup clash at the London Stadium. There has a big discussion whether violence has become a contentious issue again or whether this recent spat has been blown out of proportion.

The Daily Mirror recently wrote about the violence during the EFL Cup game between Man Utd v Man City. However this game was not as highlighted in the press. There were 14 arrests during the local derby between Birmingham and Aston Villa but there was only coverage of this in the Birmingham Mail. These violent altercations have proven there are still issues in football but why was there not a large amount of press coverage compared to the West Ham v Chelsea game. It obviously highlights there are still issues today but the media fail to report on them extensively.

The Olympic Stadium has been at the centre of
some violent incidents amongst fans

Amanda Jacks, case worker on policing and stewarding for the Football Supporters Federation, said: “I do not think disorder has gone away as it is drawn out in arrest figures on the home office website. When there is disorder it is highlighted so dramatically.

“When there is disorder the vast majority of people do not intend on disorder, certainly not like organised disorder like in the past.”

She added that the media however do not scrutinise the policing and security for their “unpreparedness” and “failure of crowd management”.

The media are too quick to blame mindless thugs rather than discuss the lack of a contingency plan by the police and security and Ms Jacks admitted “how the crowd is managed impacts on the fans’ behaviour.”

The recent violence at the Olympic Stadium can be underpinned to a fan’s identification that they can get away with what they want because there is a lack of security measures made at the arena. There is not a violent pandemic which has risen in football recently. There is a resurgence of a pandemic in the press because the London Stadium costs a lot for the taxpayers and is causing more problems than it should do. 

The table below is Home Office statistics on Football-related arrests made within 2010-11 to 2014-15 football seasons.

Football-related arrests by offence type within
2010-2011 to 2014-15 football seasons

The stats suggest that there is a fluctuation in the amount of violence in football over the past few seasons according to arrests made in the areas of throwing missiles, public disorder and violent disorder at football grounds. It does identify to an extent how football violence has not gone away and media hype on a particular occasion should not be justified because violence at football does exist.

A video on fan's views on violence in football