Whether or not Liverpudlians want to be English I don’t stand for watching my fellow countrymen and women getting beaten up by the cowardly French - says Patrick Christys

I’m a bit conflicted over this one this morning, ladies and gentlemen. I’m a Manchester United fan, in my defence I do at least come from Manchester…but that means something.

I don’t normally like the Scousers. But that’s football, and, ironically, what happened in Paris over the weekend before the Champions League Final had nothing to do with football. It was personal.

In case you’re not aware, it kicked off big time. The French gendarmes saw fit to spray gas at the disabled, blind people and young children and women both as they attempted to get into the ground and at a designated fan zone.

Now, UEFA and the French Police are claiming that thousands of Liverpool fans attempted to get into the ground using fake tickets.

Look, part of the magic of the Champions League final is the attempt to get into the ground to watch your team hopefully lift the European Cup.

Football history is littered with stories of people who begged, borrowed and stole to get to the game – some Liverpool fans even hired a boat and sailed across the Channel this time.

If you walk around Manchester City centre there's at least one million people who claim to have been in the ground on that fateful evening in 1999 when Solskjaer broke the Germans’ hearts.

It’s hardly a shock that people would try to illegally get into the biggest football match of the year.

I’m sure there was a bit of argy-bargy as well. There is every week outside grounds in the Premier League.

And, no matter what, it doesn’t excuse the way French police behaved.

There's a video of a young lad trying to scan his ticket, a police officer walks up to him and just randomly sprays him in the face with tear gas.

And then another video which shows a woman getting beaten up by police in the designated fan zone in what appears to be an unprovoked attack.

What scummy behaviour that is. Now, I want to make something very clear, I was absolutely fuming when I heard Liverpool fans booing the national anthem, and Prince William, during the FA Cup final, that was an absolute disgrace.

And it’s no surprise that I was supporting Real Madrid on Saturday. But whether or not Liverpudlians want to be English, they are, and I don’t stand for watching my fellow countrymen and women getting beaten up by the cowardly French.

I think it was political. I wouldn’t be surprised if the order to do this came right from the top. The French have riots every single week and the police don’t always behave like this. France hosts major sporting events regularly, and this kind of disorganised chaos doesn’t occur.

I strongly suspect that this was about giving the English a bloody nose.

If the French had shown this kind of fight during either World War or in terms of standing up for Ukraine then I’d have more respect for them.

As it stands, this was just a bunch of pumped up robo-cops from a nation that Britain saved, has outmanoeuvred politically and logistically in recent times, run by a Poundshop Napoleon in a weird marriage who is doing his best to diminish his country’s standing on the world stage.