The fortress we were dreaming of when things were less rosy… This man made it become true, I love him.
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It was 4 - 2 to Palace, one to Swansea and one to Leeds. Even more impressive is 2 of those were in his first full season.
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Loved the atmosphere in the last two games from what I could hear and see, absolutely brilliant support for the team.
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LFC need to sort this mess out 
It’s getting ridiculous now.
The club must open the turnstiles earlier and put more stewards on each one including at least one female steward at every turnstile so women can be searched appropriately.
It is absolutely unacceptable to have men hand-searching women at the turnstiles
This whole entry process needs major improvement and it needs doing fast.
If the club insists on searching every fan, then invest in speeding up the process.
Why not close the turnstiles 30 minutes before kick-off and keep everything moving?
There is no reason for huge crowds to build up, leaving families, kids and elderly fans standing in the rain getting soaked every single Matchday.
And fans don’t leave it to the last minute
The stadium should be filling up well before kick-off, just like it used to. A full ground 30 minutes before the whistle creates a much better atmosphere for everyone
We all love this club, but this matchday experience isn’t good enough. It has to change.
Liverpool Supporters Galway YNWA 
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Did this curse it?
The amount of times I’ve had to stand up so someone can get past as the players are lining up was a bit silly.
Is this more in recent weeks due to what happened on the train as it wasn’t something I noticed when I went (then again that’s sadly pre Covid). Didn’t notice it at the Wimbledon game I went a few weeks back (before the train thing).
I remember going to Palace during the season when they had that shooting at a gig in Paris. And they basically upped security for about a month, when I got back after Christmas it had gone back to the level of that meme
The article was posted on their Facebook page a few hours after the game on Saturday…
Here are some of the comments adding to this viewpoint…
Liverpool did advise people get there early if your a regular at Anfield you get search for those who get there late it’s your own fault I travel 250 miles and still manage to get in 49 mins before kick off and no issues I hope some of those caught up were the ones who walked out on Liverpool on 70 minutes bloody disgrace home you head in same
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Chrissy Phoenix Butcher totally agree. I feel for those who struggled to get in, but we went in through turnstiles N with little issue.
As for those leaving early, you need to look at yourselves YNWA?
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Scan.
Beep
“Oh it’s just the zip”
Pointless
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They open stadium 2 hours before kick off and should open.3 hours before I was in lower kenny Dalglish stand and went in 45 minutes before kick off no queue
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I totally agree with everything you are saying but unfortunately it is not the clubs decision to search everyone it was in fact a campaign led by some of the family of the tragic bombings . This is known as Martins law where everyone has to be searched in any stadium within the UK
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It’s a complete farce I’ve worked in schools with knife crime and had to wander every day the green lights are telling us somnot at the stadium it’s a case of wand and get in and about every 10th person getting pattered down and it is kids doing it cheap and nasty no experience
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There’s only one reason they are doing it and that’s to get everyone in the ground earlier so you spend more money inside, just a tourist club now and only interested in your money
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I was searched for having a flare which i never had. Almost stopped last game of season …
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One no man should be searching a women in a hand search but they can search hand bags and use metal detector hand held.
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Same every game on entrance E no organisation.
Been like this for a long time now.
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Ita because so many leave it to last minuite get there earlier problem solved. In terms of women being searched by men whats the issue i get searched by women?
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Been stuck in thm when I go the games and all the say too u is get here early then doors opend at 6 to 6.30 its a joke getting pushed
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Going early is a wonderful thing..
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Then u get to the turnstile and pass won’t scan, I was mortified husband already in as went infront of me
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Love how someone makes the point about it being a law thing and then claim its the club getting you to spend money.
If that was really the case you wouldn’t have a fan zone outside would you.
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These bastards are utter scum for fleecing the fans
LFC player’s uncle handed tickets to tout in return for cash, court hears
Story by Adam Everett - Liverpool Echo
Joseph Johnson outside Liverpool Crown Court
The uncle of a Liverpool FC first team player handed over a “large amount” of match tickets to a tout in return for cash, a court has heard. Joseph Johnson called himself “Billy big balls” while colluding with staff in the club’s ticket office and flogged passes to away games for up to £400.
His fraudulent scheme, which saw tickets resold at “significantly inflated prices”, spanned several years and involved the creation of more than 1,000 LFC memberships using fake names and details, generating hundreds of thousands of pounds in profits. He and his associates were also said to have operated the “Amazon” of his trade from a leased office at a sixth form college.
A trial at Liverpool Crown Court previously heard that Johnson and his co-defendants Louis James, James Johnson, Liam Rice and Lee Smith were “involved in a sophisticated ticket fraud”, whose “central purpose was to obtain as many Liverpool football tickets as possible”. These would then be resold “at significantly inflated prices via online secondary websites”, such as Viagogo, StubHub and Ticketbis.
Nicola Daley, prosecuting, described how both Louis James and James Johnson worked in the club’s ticket office, with the former having been employed by LFC on a casual basis from as early as 2002 before moving to this role in October 2016. The latter meanwhile had previously been an Anfield Stadium tour guide before being reassigned to an “identical position” in 2014, thereafter leaving the club in December 2017.
However, in February 2018, an upgrade to LFC’s ticket management identified four “local general sale tickets”, specially priced at £9 for supporters residing in Liverpool postcodes, which were processed and sold before they had been made available to fans. This led to further internal investigations, which revealed that numerous other tickets in different names had been purchased using the same credit card.
An identical password, “Luis7”, was also used for sales to multiple supposed customers, while many were made using the address of the Crowne Plaza hotel on Princes Dock in Liverpool city centre. Games against Newcastle United and FC Porto during March 2018 were among those where discrepancies were identified, with tickets seemingly purchased using different bank cards but the same supporter names.
Email addresses which were utilised meanwhile “followed a similar format”, consisting of a person’s name followed by “lfc@gmail.com”. A further audit then established that James had “been responsible for processing somewhere between 40 to 50 local general tickets sales per home game”.
This led to him being observed by a senior member of staff being collected from the stadium in a white Mercedes 4x4 by Joseph Johnson, who is no relation to James Johnson, on one occasion. The car then parked close to the nearby Park pub on Walton Breck Road before James “took up his position” at the sales window of LFC’s ticket office.
Later the same day, he was observed removing around 30 envelopes containing tickets, season passes and membership cards from storage boxes and “secreting them at his desk”. He was subsequently said to have exchanged messages with Joseph Johnson, described as being “central to the business”, before he exited his vehicle, approached the window and was handed the envelopes.
This led to the matter being reported to Merseyside Police and James’ dismissal from the club. Detectives seized his mobile phone at this time and analysed almost a quarter of a million messages and nearly 27,000 images.
Ms Daley said of their findings: “Messages extracted from Louis James’ phone, in fact, tell you the story, what was going on. Ultimately, piecing together lots of different things, the police discovered that over 1,000 memberships appear to have either been created or used in relation to Liverpool FC tickets as part of this.
Messages between the defendants showed the almost daily, minute by minute, exchange about tickets between Louis James and Joseph Johnson from 2016 onwards.”
Jurors heard of one WhatsApp exchange in August 2015, when Louis James told James Johnson: “My mate has 22 membership cards. Say you make £40 on each ticket for every home game, you get around £15,000. You would get more than that though, the big games would fetch well more.”
In spite of James ultimately being caught, jurors were told that “the business developed significantly” from this point and ultimately “extended beyond Liverpool Football Club to the obtaining by dishonest means and then reselling of tickets to matches for other Premier League football clubs”. The recovery of Joseph Johnson’s phone, following his own arrest on August 8 2019, led to officers discovering a WhatsApp group in which he, James, Smith and Rice were participants.
Liam Rice and Lee Smith outside Liverpool Crown Court
This led to the discovery of messages “in relation to the buying and selling of tickets on not only a large, nationwide, but an international scale”. This came after they set up their own resale business, Seatfinder UK, in April 2018, with discussions in August of the same year having apparently referred to 80 tickets for games against Paris Saint German and Napoli being sold for a combined £12,500, having been worth a total of £720 at face value.
The company had been registered in Dubai, “away from the eyes of UK law”, in late March before, on April 10, Smith signed a lease on an office at St Helens College’s Kirkby campus, which the company “was to be operated from”. Videos which were subsequently recovered from Joseph Johnson’s phone showed rows of desks in this room, rented at a rate of £550 per month and complete with dozens of computers, apparently for the purpose of “harvesting” tickets.
The site meanwhile branded itself as “the UK’s number one for ticket resellers and buyers” and offered a “100 per cent money back guarantee” for dissatisfied customers. Ms Daley said: "The prosecution say that room became the heartbeat of the business. This was a business that had grown from bedroom computers to an operational, international business with a sophisticated website selling platform.
“The prosecution’s case is that the business, by this stage, had moved on significantly since its infancy. It had gone from the equivalent of the market stall to a local shop and, thereafter, to the supermarket chain or Amazon of unauthorised football resale tickets.”
Computers which were subsequently seized when the premises was raided during the summer of 2020 contained a document which made apparent references to the operation having 250 memberships at Liverpool FC, 100 at each of Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur and 50 at Manchester City. Jurors were also read several further WhatsApp messages which had been exchanged between the defendants, with Louis James referring to Joseph Johnson having an “empire” in one.
During another exchange, the latter boasted “I’m the man in Liverpool, my b****cks are massive, billy big balls”. James told him in response “I’m the one in the underworld no one knows about”, before Joseph Johnson referred to him as the “Ronnie Biggs of the ticket office”.
Joseph Johnson, of Chelford Road in Eccleston, St Helens, ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud by abuse of position and two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation on the second day of the trial. The 42-year-old returned to the same court in order to be sentenced this afternoon, Friday.
Ms Daley stated during today’s hearing that one email showed the “mastermind of the business” offering tickets for home games against Burnley, Stoke City, Chelsea and West Ham United for £90, £125, £200 and £125 respectively. Away games at Everton and Manchester United were meanwhile advertised at prices of £250 and £400.
Data from StubHub relating to the same email address meanwhile showed that it had been involved in sales to the value of €598,746, equivalent to around £520,000 at the current exchange rate, between 2016 and 2018. His PayPal account, relating to a hair extension business called Russian Locks, also received transfers amounting to £743,500 during the same period.
Of the £9 tickets purchased by Johnson’s operation, Ms Daley said: “Tickets for local supporters, priced to make football accessible to all, were being diverted and sold for highly inflated prices. That was the criminality, not that there was a genuine financial loss to Liverpool Football Club.”
The court meanwhile heard of one message sent by Smith to Joseph Johnson in October 2018, in which he said: “Do you know how much money is on the log from the beginning of the season until now? Drum roll, £305,457.81.”
Ms Daley went on to state that further evidence, which was not heard during the aborted trial, “related to the uncle of a first team player coming to the defendant’s car and transferring a large amount of tickets for a large amount of cash”. While the footballer in question was not named, she added: “I was unsure about current players or players at the time meeting with any of these defendants.”
Johnson’s counsel Dominic Thomas said on his behalf: “Liverpool Football Club made no loss. The customers of this fraud gave it a 4.5 out of 5 rating on Trustpilot.”
When Judge David Swinnerton remarked that “customers of drug dealers are often happy with the product”, Mr Thomas continued: "Not always, and not on Trustpilot. It is a fact that customers of this fraud felt able to advertise their satisfaction with it on a public forum.
"They are not, in essence, the victims of some dastardly, sinister misrepresentation. Here, the gravamen of the offence is misrepresentation. The preponderance of customers, your honour can respectfully and properly find, knew very well what they were getting
"I am not suggesting that this is not a criminal offence. I am not suggesting that he is not going to jail. It is not a tangible harm in terms of loss or impact to the customers. It is not a tangible harm in terms of loss or impact to the football club.
"There was dishonesty in the ticket office. That was dishonesty which has warped what ought to have been going on in this ticket office, mainly, people who would have got cheaper tickets could not do so.
"There is another side to this defendant. He is lightly and not relevantly convicted. He has got two children. The eldest is nine, the youngest is six.
Rice, aged 35 and of Mount Crescent in Kirkby, similarly admitted one charge of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation on the day two of the trial. Smith, aged 38 and of Moss Lane in Ormskirk, also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud by abuse of position and one count of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation.
James Johnson, of Westcombe Road in Anfield, meanwhile admitted conspiracy to commit fraud by abuse of position and one offence of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation. Judge Swinnerton had likewise been due to pass sentence on these defendants this afternoon, Friday, but this will now take place on December 17 due to a lack of court time.
Louis James, of Lapford Crescent in Kirkby, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud by abuse of position and two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation in advance of the trial, was not before the court today. The 37-year-old will also be sentenced next month, with all having been released on bail until this date.