Trying to understand what happened at Villa Park with Legia Warsaw

1700 Legia Warsaw fans could've been in Villa Park yesterday. The police made that number 890 (1002 with hospitality). Legia ultras made it 0.

Scenes occurred that you never want to see at a football match. Flares being used as weapons, weapons being carried, fighting with police. Genuine threat (even if not aimed at you). It's not the football that we know.

Before these European home matches, I've started hanging out with the excellent AVFC On Camera, and the reasoning (apart from them being lovely) is that we chill out with the away fans in their pub before the game in Birmingham City centre.

Why? We just want to hear their story, and see them in action. Truth be told, sometimes you do expect things to kick off, and if I'm going to write about them, I want to know them. That's only fair, and we'd expect the same.

Truth is often found in the middle of arguments. I don't want to justify what some Legia fans did last night. I just want to share what I've seen and heard on the ground, as I've done with a number of games this season.

A few things first.

A real threatening situation shouldn't be overlooked and while I don't agree wholeheartedly with the pre-match tactics of West Midlands Police, I struggle to see what other options they were presented with last night. They certainly earned their wages, and shouldn't have ever left with injuries. Certainly, their working environment at a football match should never ever descend into such threat.

On the same hand, this bizarre fear of the 'other' has to end. I saw a photo of a 'mob' of Legia fans 'prowling' Witton before the game. I was walking behind them to the stadium and that it was just a Polish family using Google Maps to direct themselves to the stadium. Tarring them all with the brush of the 'hooligan' isn't fair. We cried foul of that on our own 'black night' against West Brom almost a decade ago. To assume they are all violent thugs is a dangerous, and stupid assumption, and not something we'd take kindly to if the reverse happened. To assume they are all aligned with Legia ultras is unfair.

Let me take you pre-game. Work has finished, I'm in town and AVFCOC finds some Warsaw fans to sit with. We meet up and talk. It's the same topic for an hour.

The line from the fairly jovial lads I sat down with in the Square Peg was that there was to be no trouble, no malice. They just want their allocation, as it was, in full. All in, or none.

This is where it gets sticky. What does that mean? What is fair? Do they want 3,000 tickets? That number is well over the 5% capacity defined by UEFA for Conference League Games. Do they want the 5%? Do they want the 1700 'agreed' between them and Villa? They certainly wanted more than the 890 given.

At any rate, for anything less than around 2500 - 3000 tickets, Legia fans would miss out. A fair allocation has many of them locked out. The ultras line of 'all in or none in' is solid, until it's applied in practice. When 1700 get in, do they just tell 1300 of their own supporters to shove it? Without a large police presence, do they stick to that party line? What does 'none in' exactly mean?

Well, I'm convinced that 'none in' didn't mean 'kick off' in the eyes of many normal Legia fans. They just don't have as loud a voice as peaceful match going fans would want. Many were turned away, but the police say 700 or so ended up being kettled in after delaying a ticket pickup location. This was enough to fulfill their allocation, yet it did not happen. Legia must answer internally for that, unless the police simply refused to allow them in regardless.

I am fairly fond of ultras culture - for the most part - but ultras cannot run roughshod over their own club. Legia - the club itself - must ask as many questions internally as they are pointing externally. Their post-game statement - after a number of their fans had attacked police - was tone deaf at best and malicious at worst. I found that it did not at all represent the fans I had spoken to, who just wanted to watch football. It represented their lunatic fringe, and UEFA must do more to prevent dangerous idiots from getting a big voice inside clubs.

It was the perfect storm.

Ultras saying they are discriminated against by Aston Villa and English police. Normal fans feeling genuinely hurt by this perceived discrimination. The club refusing to give out tickets so fans who had purchased them were forced to stick to the 'all in or none in' line, and be kettled by police as their ultras fight authorities.

I can't get the sit down in the Square Peg out of my head. Genuine feelings of pain. They were wounded. Gutted.

I emphasise with that to an extent. The match was no spectacle because of what happened. The reduction in allocation pissed an already wounded fanbase off. They were heading to the match angry, and that's because of the reduction to 890 tickets, as well as the actions of their own club in refusing to hand out tickets to normal fans who just wanted to go.

They were caged. Angry. Mad.

I've been there. A little bit. In Warsaw. It's not nice being kettled by police. It's not an arena where good feeling blossoms. It was a bit scary. If you add another layer cake of context, there was only ever going to be one result. The ultimatum was never going to be granted. The police were never going to budge. Guess what happened next.

A world where 1700 Legia fans entered Villa Park exists, and it might've been safer for all to allow that to happen. We'll never know. I found being surrounded by 30,000 of them in Warsaw fairly hostile, but never violent. A tense situation was inflamed by an allocation reduction, it was set alight by the actions of a number of ultras on Witton Lane.

Nobody can discount the evidence of what happened, but it is happening.Video exists of a policeman being set alight with pyro, a Polish journalist, Samuel Szczygielsk, was seemingly set upon by police outside the ground, 46 people were arrested (four for possessing weapons), four police officers were injured.

Szczygielsk's comments required a huge suspension of disbelief. I do not like that he was met with force by police at all, but his comments accusing Aston Villa fans of aggression need to be answered. He is wrong, and his method of getting into the faces of Villa fans without qualifying that he was a journalist - not just a Legia fan hanging around - was not acceptable. Fans had seen trouble, and someone presenting as a Legia fan looking like they are trying to get into the stadium was always going to be met with hostility. He said Villa fans were brutal, he should've looked behind him. If there is a PR war to be won between Villa and Legia, the images of West Midlands Police members being set alight will live longer in the memory than a prat baiting Villa fans will.

You're likely never going to solve the problems that caused last night's scenes, because there's people inside clubs who think they are the dog's bollocks and reckon they can try and simply alpha-male a police force, and their own fanbase, to death. Ultras culture creates a spectacle, but in overwhelming force, it is toxic and threatening. The police say that four Legia fans were caught with weapons, there can never be any justification for that. At the very least for us, their beef was just with the police. I was in a group of fans that walked amongst Legia fans and they were only occupied with chanting at the police and grouping together. The only injury to a fan I saw was believed to be caused by another Villa fan.

The allocation itself caused issues and I, personally, don't think it was the right call as it simply gave ultras their 'all in or none in' line. I could be wrong, but I feel that move exacerbated the situation. Legia said that in their own statement and it makes me want to distance myself away from any empathy, but it remains my truth.

The fact that Legia's leaders saw it fit to deny tickets and commit to action caused tension, and violence. They could've simply sent 1002 of their best in and made a racket. The allocation was perhaps unfair, but all allocations are unfair; Villa could've sent more to Alkmaar, and with more notice, to Warsaw. They could probably send 5000 fans to each Premier league game. The fact that Legia chose to do this can be viewed in one of two ways. It was either solidarity, or baiting violence. I personally think it's a toxic version of the former that led to the latter. Legia's demands were always going to outweigh supply, and that causes another issue. An understanding could've been made by their leading figures. It wasn't. If anyone let down their fans, it's Legia's leadership and they have a lot to answer for.

Villa raised concerns over ticketless fans trying to enter the stadium. Some Legia fans had tickets in the home end, and were frogmarched out by security. Some broke into the stadium when they scored. No matter your anger with an allocation, you cannot - as a ticketless fan - attend. That puts people, your own fanbase often, in danger. At Alkmaar, we'd have fumed if the thousands who had travelled decided they had earned a ticket simply because of their transit. They'd have endangered Alkmaar fans, the police, and ourselves. It's not fair, it's dangerous and it's not right. Loads travelled to Witton Lane and again, is that solidarity or something else entirely? That number was always going to result in Warsaw fans without tickets - and it did. Some of whom did walk around Villa Park, and ended up in a bizarre skirmish involving mayonnaise being launched into the Holte End from a burger fan.

Villa also said that Legia engaged in 'planned and systematic acts of violence' - this is backed up by the arrest figures mentioned earlier - and that the club did not co-operate with Villa, which is backed by the 'all in or none in' line. The club did a commendable job in the circumstances.

I wish there could've been another result to this, but it all seemed sadly inevitable. Planned violence, feelings of mistrust, communication breakdown and anger. It was only ever going to go one way.

Clubs must do better in two-way communication, allocations must be sorted months in advance with no exceptions, everyone needs to have a seat at the table and be heard - and it can't just be sulking dickheads from one club that tank it for them, and cause a violent situation.

The empathy I have for Legia was eroded quite a bit by their actions. The majority of home fans were far removed from it, and never a target, but nonetheless, people were hurt. That shouldn't ever happen at a football game, and a few Legia fans chose to do that. No matter the exacerbation, the kettling, the fury and the feelings, they chose to fight. That can never be justified.

Allocations may be unfair, you may feel belittled, the police might treat you badly. As a football fan you can't react in the way that some did last night. Broken bottles in Witton can happen sometimes, injuries caused by fans shouldn't.

It'll be interesting to see how UEFA react, because Legia Warsaw are being let down by a fringe in their fanbase that has control. That fringe reacted too badly to an annoyance, and caused something that can never happen again at Villa Park.

The saddest thing for Legia is that they played up to a stereotype, and one they will find hard to scrub away now. The belligerent amongst us can simply say 'I told you so', and they'd be right. That's never the position we want to start from, in a place of judgement that is an acid eating away at the respect we need to start with.

But then I think of the scenes from last night, the action and reaction, the bullshit, the baiting for a fight, and I feel that empathy erode further. Legia just kept digging a deeper hole, and that is entirely their own business now. When you're feeling let down constantly by others, and it's becoming a trend, it's often best to start by looking in the mirror. Legia's leadership might want to head to a homeware shop when they get back.

One day, under better circumstances, we might see a peaceful Legia back at Villa Park, with their flares blaring and their flags flying. Their culture in-stadium is a sight to behold and something that will live with me for a long time, but how they negotiate these away fixtures needs drastic change. There was no war in Witton until they chose to declare it.