With today being the last game at Anfield before Christmas Day, it is the last chance for the football community to come together for the annual Feed the Scousers campaign.

If you are heading up to Liverpool today, ensure to take a can of tuna or baked beans to lob into the away end. As always, the Liverpool fans will be grateful for anything that is free.

Jokes aside, when did it become a thing to be offended about the Feed the Scousers song?

Feed the Scousers, let them know it’s Christmas time.
Feed the Scousers, let them know it’s Christmas time.

It has been sung decades, for as long as I have been going football. My first memory of it was as a 14 or 15 at Highbury, and I do not even think we were playing one of the Liverpool clubs at the time.

Now I get that there are many songs that were sung in the 90s that are no longer appropriate by 2023 moral standards, and many more than were sung back then that were not appropriate by any standards.

For years, we have banned the use of the Y word on our Facebook page. We listened to Jewish fans of both Arsenal and Tottenham and agreed that the word should no longer be part of a football fans vocabulary in the 21st Century.

We are now just waiting for Tottenham fans to catch up and stop chanting the pejorative term, and it is crazy that all Sky do is “turn the mics down” everytime the Spurs fans sing their songs…

You also have songs that were never appropriate to sing, including some sang by our own fans over the decades about Spurs fans. On the whole, thesehave been consigned to history, especially since the arrival of camera phones. But other clubs still sing many songs that are vile.

You get Manchester United fans singing grotesque songs about Hillsborough, and in response, Liverpool fans (as well as Leeds fans), singing about the Munich air disaster. No fan or player should go to a game and not come home. And songs about disasters should not go down on banter.

Liverpool and Manchester United really do need to do more about the victim chanting their fans aim against each other.

Maybe instead of finger pointing at eachother, they should work harder to remove those fans that sing about Hillsborough in the Stretford End, or do airplane motions in the Kop End. Visiting fans from either club will try and deny these happen, and this is part of the problem.

You then also get Liverpool fans always singing what is now considered a homophobic chant towards Chelsea fans everytime they go to Stamford Bridge.

Personally, I have no issue with the rent boy song, and feel this goes down as a bit of banter. It is not homphobic and reportedly goes back to 1980s after a tabloid newspaper reports alleged a member of the Chelsea Headhunters,had been found in bed with a male sex worker during a police raid.

My view is that it was sung because Chelsea was known to be the area where a lot of MP’s rented, and visiting dignitaries stayed when in London during the 80s and 90s, and whilst alone, would hire in local teenage male sex workers, piling them with drugs before having their wicked way with them.

And let’s not start about the vile songs that Celtic (and to a lesser extent Liverpool) fans sing…they will celebrate any death just because of their political party. Real odd behaviour.

Singing about feeding Scousers and Chelsea rent-boys do, for me, just go into the “terrace banter” bucket. Just like when fans single out a fat lad “who is the fatty in the pink” or see someone wearing an orange Stone Island and then spend the next hour hour singing satsuuuuuuuma at them. The snowflake generation will say this is bullying. But it is terrace life and tame.

The Scousers are on the end of many specific chants aimed at them, but they give as good as they get and their behaviour leaves them open to being mocked. Feed the Scousers, Sign On, and my personal favourite, In your Liverpool slums.

In your Liverpool slums,
You look in the dustbin for something to eat,
You find a dead rat and you think it’s a treat,
In your Liverpool slums.

We now live in a world where people go out of their way to be offended. Fans who 10-years ago who never had an issue with a song, and sung worse themself, now faking outrage. Liverpool fans certainly fall into this category these days (again, they are happy to give it out). Jamie Carragher the perfect example.

Carragher has jumped on the bandwagon, bashing fans for singing Feed the Scousers.

This is the same Carragher that was once sent off for throwing a coin into the Highbury crowd. The same Carragher that spat on a 14-year-old girl.

I bet if I spat on Carragher on the way home from work, he would be demanding the Scousers find me, my place of work, etc and demand I be fired. Named and shamed. Yet Carra still has a job despite his vile actions.

Not once during the 90s, 00s or 10s did Carragher ever speak about Feed the Scousers. It was a non-issue for 30+ years. It is only now that it has become an issue. It is being offended for offended sake.

Now I get that povery and child hunger is a real thing. Although I do think it is overblown in this country (go travel to Cambodia, Brazil or India to see true child poverty). And whilst I get that some people do rely on food banks, my personal belief is that many of those who use them do so only because they exist, and not because they actually need to.

Students using food banks whilst going out in London twice a week. Those who use food banks as some sort of political statement so that they can say “I am a nurse on £28,407 per year but need to use a food bank”, just so that they can go on BBC and make a political statement.

I honestly think that if they closed 90% of the food banks in this country, child hunger would not increase. The majority of families would just re-prioritise their financials.

Those people that get their Frosties from a food bank to leave their money to buy fags or booze, Sky TV or all-inclusive holidays take advantage of the system.

For clarity, I grow up in poverty. I never went abroad until I was 11, and that was to a campsite in northern France. My family never had more than 4 (and later 5) channels on the TV. Never had a new car. All my clothes were my brothers. But we always had fresh food on the table cooked by my mum (parents learning to cook would have a huge impact on reducing food poverty, but thats a blog for another day!)

I digress and this is a football blog, not a blog that holds up a mirror to society.

Feed the Scousers. Nothing wrong with it. Stop being offended by everything. Stop trying to turn the terrace’s into the Albert Hall.

UTA.

Keenos

Doing our bit 💪

We've linked up with Islington Foodbank to introduce a matchday food bank collection at Emirates Stadium that will run on every weekend game from today until the end of the 2023/24 season 👇

— Arsenal (@Arsenal) December 2, 2023