Hillsborough chants at Elland Road were disgraceful and are nothing short of abusive

A minority of Leeds United supporters were heard belting out offensive chants during Liverpool's visit in the Premier League on Sunday...

It happened again.

Something that shouldn’t have ever happened in the first place has marred domestic football fixtures involving Liverpool for three decades.

I’m, sadly, talking about opposition fans singing chants that are disgraceful and nothing short of abusive to Reds supporters, Scousers in general, and even more so to those directly impacted by the Hillsborough disaster.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when these songs were vocalised at Elland Road over the weekend, but they certainly piqued when Harvey Elliott was clattered by Pascal Struijk, leaving the teenager needing surgery on his ankle.

This write-up isn’t about that, though - the defender obviously didn’t want to injure the 18-year-old, and I simply don’t care if anyone believes the Leeds United defender did or didn’t deserve the red card he got - this is about something much, much bigger.

Chants about Hillsborough - “always the victims”, “96 won’t be missed”, etc. - are by design intended to offend, but they don’t do just that.

The people referred to in these awful chants are real, they’re not fictional characters, 96 Liverpool fans attended a football match in 1989 and were unlawfully killed. The 97th victim also passed away very recently, further highlighting the disgrace.

Now, with that reality in mind, imagine being a relative or friend of one of those poor souls at Hillsborough and being dragged through courts for over 30 years - reliving the horror every day and being told your loved ones were actually to blame, by pockets of the media, by politicians, and by the ignorant.

Now, with that reality in mind, imagine hearing a gang of idiots inside a football stadium chanting the vile things we heard at Elland Road over the weekend.

As I said further up, it’s nothing short of abuse.

There are loads of awful chants heard every other week, sadly, and hopefully one day that’ll change and clubs actually do something to stop it.

At the very least, I’d hope Leeds United can understand what was heard at their stadium needs to be addressed and they should issue a public apology on behalf of the idiotic minority of their support on Sunday.

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