Fans of Liverpool are all too familiar with the realities of odious mistreatment and misrepresentation at the hands of tabloid newspapers.
Not too far removed from the long and painful journey the families of the Hillsborough had to take in achieving justice, the unfortunate scenes of violence surrounding Liverpool's 5-2 defeat of Roma on Tuesday night took on a bitterly familiar tone in the Daily Express.
With an Irish Liverpool fan in hospital, and two Roma 'fans' in police custody for their attack on Sean Cox, Colin Mafham felt the need to ask, 'Why does trouble seem to follow [Liverpool fans] like bees round a honey pot?'
It's not the players who produced that performance who I have an issue with, it's some of the people who 'follow' them that frighten the living daylights out of me. You would have thought the deaths of 39 Italians at the European Cup final Liverpool lost to Juventus in 1985 - plus the five year ban on English clubs that consequently came after that - would have had a sobering effect.
You would have thought the horrors at Hillsborough and 96 more deaths that followed only four years later would have made everyone more aware of their responsibilities to each other.
In a lengthy diatribe, Mafham fawns concern for football fans, whilst remorselessly applying the kind of jingoistic nonsense that is so quick to appear when Liverpool's fan-base are under scrutiny.
Writing of the piece for the Liverpool Echo, David Prentice highlights the inaccuracies of Mafham's all-too-easy assessment:
Once again the two very different tragedies of Heysel and Hillsborough are lumped shamelessly together. Heysel was a criminal act for which 14 Liverpool fans were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and seven served jail sentences.
Hillsborough was wholly different – a tragedy in which it took 28 years for a jury to rule what really happened: that 96 Liverpool fans were unlawfully killed in a disaster that Reds supporters were judged to have played no role in causing.
While the Daily Express were quick to take Mafham's article down from their site, Liverpool's mayor Joe Anderson has since revealed that the newspaper has issued a 'really passionate, sincere, heartfelt apology.'
Really passionate,sincere heartfelt apology just been made to me by the Editor @Daily_Express Gary Jones over the appalling slur on LFC fans and our City. The Journalist concerned has rightly been suspended and an investigation is being held.
— Joe Anderson (@joeando58) April 26, 2018
Somewhat wise after the event, it is nonetheless partial recompense for yet another unsubstantiated attack on Liverpool's fans.
The Daily Express have included an apology on their website which can be read here.
