Going to try to sum up my feelings about the Pier Head in a quick thread. Apologies if you hate threads or you've seen plenty about it, but I'm incensed.

I was disappointed to see so many people congregate at Anfield on Thursday night, but I understood it. The outpouring of 1/?

Emotion and the desire to be with people that you know and love at that moment. I was able to have friends & family in my garden to watch the match and celebrate in a socially distanced manner, but not everyone is so lucky. You head where you know, I guess. I said in the 2/?

Preceding weeks that people wouldn't congregate if we won the league but I was wrong. I didn't like to see it, but I did get it.

Yesterday, though, was a totally different thing. The immediate glory and desperation to be with others wasn't an excuse any longer and the people 3/?

Who went there were just being selfish and idiotic. It was fuelled by drink and, in many cases, youth. The thing is, I don't think we get to talk about how annoying it is for all football supporters to be tarred with the same brush when England fans do something crass in a 4/?

foreign country and then idolise what happened at the Pier Head. I think the people setting fireworks off were massive dickheads, but the fact they got cheered and no one tried to stop them means we can't talk about self-policing or the wider fanbase being better than that. 5/?

We all knew that the whole country was going to have eyes on Merseyside in the wake of us winning the title and whether they're the minority or not, those pricks will be used as a stick with which to beat all Liverpool and all football supporters moving forward. It's a sad 6/?

indictment of us and plays into exactly the same narrative as those that still talk about Heysel & Hillsborough without wanting to understand any nuance surrounding them. If this was Chelsea, Spurs or United fans there would be plenty of Reds jumping on here to say it's 7/?

disgusting, so we should all be saying exactly the same thing even though it's our own. The vast majority if us have been following the rules but now opposition fans, desperate for something to point to in order to "other" us, have got all of the ammunition that they need. 8/?

Next time England fans smash up a bar in Portugal or Spain, we'll be greeted by videos of lads firing fireworks at the Liver Building. When we try to argue that football fans deserve more respect and credit, we'll be shown photos of lads hanging off the Shankly Gates. 9/?

It's also impossible to talk about all of this without acknowledging that the government's messaging is at least partly to blame. From Cummings to VE Day celebrations down to bars & restaurants reopening & 2 metres becoming 1, the message is that this is almost over when it 10/?

isn't. That's not an excuse, but you can hardly point to Liverpool fans and say "what a disgrace" when people doing the fucking conga was, glorified on the news. But the point still stands that those at the Pier Head behaving like that are an embarrassment & if you don't 11/12

call it out then you're complicit in my opinion. Liverpool fans are held to a higher standard than others, but we also claim to be better than others. We have to prove it in actions, not just in words. /fin.