No but in the early 90's the English game was still recovering from the european ban whereas the Italian,Spanish etc players were getting better every season simply by playing at a higher standard every season and also making the extra money and being able to pay the top wages to the top players to make them great teams. It's only since SKY tv and the influx of foregin players to the premiership the standard has risen, i mean how many truly world class English players are around atm? If you were a good player in England in the 80's or early 90's you went to Italy or Spain (wilkins, Gazza, Platt, Keegan, Hughes) where you could earn the big money. Just as if your a good player thesedays you come and play in the premier league (Ronaldo, Drogba, Torres etc)

As i said it'll open a can of worms and agree it was a dark dark day for football but would Hillsbrough have happend if only fans with tickets turned up to the game? The police did what they thought was best at the time for the fans outside of the ground who were being crushed.

As for Heysel i watched a documentry about the disaster and although the Juventus fans wern't entierly blameless the Liverpool fans were acting like animals. It all started when a friendly game was played before the final by two Belgian teams were both clubs colours and the red team were winning 3-0 to which the Liverpool fans started celebrating by goading the Juve fans to which they inturn started to throw missles (bits of terracing) at each other across the police cordon. Again the Liverpool end was very overcrowded because of the ammount of people without tickets and drunk fans which caused arguing and fighting amognst Liverpool fans which started to spread untill they charged the fence sperating the fans and police line. It also happend that the tempory TV studio was behind the Liverpool fans this is where they got the metal poles (scaffolding bars) which had been left under the studio building (it's also claimed there was a gun involved). So all in all the Juve fans were acting like idiots in a decrept stadium but the Liverpool fans took it too far by using weapons which resulted in 39 dead and 600 injured.

Still think you are wrong and what you post seems to be fueled by hatred. Most of what you describe happens even nowadays but you don't hear about it because sport is policed a lot better (in this country anyways).
Mindless drunken idiots do spoil things for the majority.

As for Europe - in 80's and 90's it wasn't such a money machine for the top clubs. For example under same rules that Liverpool won their Euro cups, Utd would have won none. Utd would not have qualified as champions. It was also knockout comp from outset instead of 2nd 3rd chances big clubs get now with silly league format at start. Thats what is the big joke about Euro comp nowadays - its all a money making exercise for top name clubs.
In 80's 90's you could say football not having a tv contract for some of seasons contributed to players going abroad (and even Scotland for goodness sake ). The image of football was poor too, because of trouble makers (at most clubs not just scousers before you start )

I wouldn't say it fueled by hatred i just think that blaming the police everytime something happens in bull$*** one of the lads killed at Hillsbrough was from Leigh and was mates with my dad but his family accepted what happend and don't agree with the witch hunt that happend towards the police. I'll admit i'm no fan of the bin dippers but i've made my veiws from the facts i've seen on various programes over the years.

I know what your saying but you have to admit you get better the higher the level your playing which is why most leagues overtook by the start of the 90's. Mark hughes was earning £300 a week when at Manchester united he signed for Barcelona in 86 and they payed him 10 times that ammount. Gary Lineker was another who went at the same time the reasons they gave was that the clubs could pay the higher wages because they were playing in Europe every season.

According to your logic, because sporting events are better organised now and problems are few - then fans going to away games with no tickets are going to cause problems like Hillsborough. Liverpool fans went to the game to see their club play anyway they could. Just like City fans climbed over fencing at Springfield Park in play off game. Crushing their fellow friends and fans was not on their minds as you put it. Its up to the organisers and police to stop people getting hurt when large volume of people are attending an event like they do now. I remember being locked in a cage in 80's at OT when we visited (real nice) - it just wouldn't happen nowadays.

Its 30mill for finishing last in Prem, and clubs get another 500,000 for every place they move up the league. This is even b4 merchandise, sponsors and speccies are taken into account. If a club gets top 4, its another 10mill for just qualifying (because of silly 2nd 3rd chance league). Its a different world compared to 80's when football was on the slide in this country. But as a Blue, european football has rarely interested me anyways . What happened at Heysel was an accumulative of English football hooligans, and last straw happened there. Otherwise it would have just been Liverpool banned.

I know.

Can we change the thread title to "Thanks Boro" now

ROFL