Aston Villa v Legia Warszawa: Police officers injured after clashes involving fans of Polish team outside Villa Park

Published

2 years ago

December 1, 2023

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Four police officers have been injured and 46 people are in custody after “disgusting and highly dangerous scenes” before Aston Villa’s game with Legia Warsaw.

West Midlands Police said fans of the Polish side were not allowed into the stadium after missiles were thrown at officers before the start of the Europa Conference League game on Thursday evening.

The visiting fans were held in the coach park near the ground, while officers faced “90 minutes of sustained violence”.

Stewards also removed several people believed to be away supporters from the home stands during the match, while footage on social media appeared to show objects being thrown into the stadium from outside.

A safety advisory group recommended that the ticket allocation for away fans be cut by a thousand after trouble at Legia Warsaw’s match against AZ Alkmaar in the Netherlands in October.

The force’s assistant chief constable, Damian Barratt, said this was not “taken well by the club”, with fans turning up to pick up tickets that were not there for them.

“The away fans were in an area that was identified as a ticket collection point, we were seeking to facilitate their safe entry with tickets,” he told Sky News.

“That became unsustainable and unachievable because we couldn’t maintain the same safety because they didn’t have tickets.”

He said the mood “quickly changed” when it became clear tickets were not going to be issued to all fans – and they “turned their attention onto the police officers”.

“That quickly escalated into the throwing of missiles. Those missiles were hard objects, they were flares,” he said, adding he was proud of the efforts made by officers to control the disorder.

“One of our officers was injured as a result of being struck by a flare and suffered both a burning of clothes and smoke inhalation as a result of that,” he said.

Police said in a statement that one of the injured police officers was taken to hospital, while two police horses and two police dogs were also hurt in the “disgusting and highly dangerous scenes”.

The force posted on X on Friday: “Of the suspects, 41 of those were arrested for violent disorder, four for possession of a knife/offensive weapon, and four for assaulting emergency workers.

“All of those arrested are away fans, and we’ll be working hard to charge and remand those suspects where we can today.”

Chief Inspector Tim Robinson said: “This should have been a great evening of football which was enjoyed by fans from both clubs.

“Unfortunately, there were appalling scenes which saw away fans dangerously throw flares and other missiles at our officers.”

West Midlands mayor Andy Street wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “Deeply unpleasant scenes outside Villa Park tonight, which were dealt with absolutely appropriately by West Midlands Police.

“A huge thank you to the brave officers who put themselves in harms way to keep others safe.

“I trust UEFA will now move swiftly to take strong action.”

UEFA has said it “strongly condemns the unacceptable violence” which occurred around the match.

“UEFA is in the process of gathering all official reports from the game before deciding on potential next steps,” it said in a statement.

In a statement, Legia said their official delegation, owner and president refused to enter Villa Park in solidarity with their supporters, while they also complained about the ticketing situation.

Aston Villa and Legia went into the match neck-and-neck at the top of Group E in the Europa Conference League, with the home side coming out on top with a 2-1 win.

The eight group winners automatically go through to the last 16 of the competition, while the eight runners-up go into a play-off with the third-ranked teams from the Europa League groups.

UK

Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Published

3 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Rachel Reeves hints at tax rises in autumn budget after welfare bill U-turn

Rachel Reeves has hinted that taxes are likely to be raised this autumn after a major U-turn on the government’s controversial welfare bill.

Sir Keir Starmer’s Universal Credit and Personal Independent Payment Bill passed through the House of Commons on Tuesday after multiple concessions and threats of a major rebellion.

MPs ended up voting for only one part of the plan: a cut to universal credit (UC) sickness benefits for new claimants from £97 a week to £50 from 2026/7.

Initially aimed at saving £5.5bn, it now leaves the government with an estimated £5.5bn black hole – close to breaching Ms Reeves’s fiscal rules set out last year.

In an interview with The Guardian, the chancellor did not rule out tax rises later in the year, saying there were “costs” to watering down the welfare bill.

“I’m not going to [rule out tax rises], because it would be irresponsible for a chancellor to do that,” Ms Reeves told the outlet.

“We took the decisions last year to draw a line under unfunded commitments and economic mismanagement.

“So we’ll never have to do something like that again. But there are costs to what happened.”

Meanwhile, The Times reported that, ahead of the Commons vote on the welfare bill, Ms Reeves told cabinet ministers the decision to offer concessions would mean taxes would have to be raised.

The outlet reported that the chancellor said the tax rises would be smaller than those announced in the 2024 budget, but that she is expected to have to raise tens of billions more.

It comes after Ms Reeves said she was “totally” up to continuing as chancellor after appearing tearful at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Criticising Sir Keir for the U-turns on benefit reform during PMQs, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the chancellor looked “absolutely miserable”, and questioned whether she would remain in post until the next election.

Sir Keir did not explicitly say that she would, and Ms Badenoch interjected to say: “How awful for the chancellor that he couldn’t confirm that she would stay in place.”

In her first comments after the incident, Ms Reeves said she was having a “tough day” before adding: “People saw I was upset, but that was yesterday.

“Today’s a new day and I’m just cracking on with the job.”

Sir Keir also told Sky News’ political editor Beth Rigby on Thursday that he “didn’t appreciate” that Ms Reeves was crying in the Commons.

“In PMQs, it is bang, bang, bang,” he said. “That’s what it was yesterday.

“And therefore, I was probably the last to appreciate anything else going on in the chamber, and that’s just a straightforward human explanation, common sense explanation.”

UK

Diogo Jota and Andre Silva’s funeral in pictures

Published

4 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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Diogo Jota and Andre Silva's funeral in pictures

The family and friends of Diogo Jota and his brother Andre Silva have been joined by Liverpool stars past and present and other Portuguese players at the pair’s funeral near Porto.

The Liverpool forward, 28, and his brother died in a car crash in Spain on Thursday.

Pictures below show the funeral at the Igreja Matriz de Gondomar church in the town of Gondomar near Porto. Click here for our liveblog coverage of the day’s events.

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Miguell Rocha played with Jota for around ten years with Gondomar Sport Clube in Portugal.

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The former captain was seen wiping away tears as he read messages and laid his tribute down.

UK

How Britain’s most notorious gangster turned up at a charity lunch to fact-check a retired detective’s talk

Published

9 hours ago

July 5, 2025

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How Britain's most notorious gangster turned up at a charity lunch to fact-check a retired detective's talk

Britain’s most notorious gangster and the detective who pursued him have been involved in a bizarre confrontation…at a charity lunch.

Former Detective Superintendent Ian Brown was at a Kent golf club and about to give a talk on the infamous £26m Brink’s-Mat gold robbery when he was summoned from the stage by officials.

Mr Brown, who appeared on the award-winning Sky News StoryCast podcast The Hunt For The Brink’s-Mat Gold in 2019, said: “I go outside and they say ‘he’s here’ and I say ‘who’s here’ and they say that table over there in the corner, that’s Kenny Noye with a baseball cap pulled down over his head.”

Noye stabbed to death an undercover policeman during the Brink’s-Mat investigation, but was acquitted of murder, though he was jailed for handling the stolen gold.

After his release, he used a knife again in the M25 road-rage murder of motorist Stephen Cameron.

“They said what are we going to do?” said Mr Brown.

“I said are you serving food? Well, just use plastic knives.”

Although Mr Brown had not personally arrested Noye over Brink’s-Mat he had identified him as a suspect months after the robbery.

Years later he met him during an ill-fated TV interview in which he quizzed him about his role in the robbery.

He said: “He told me everything I wanted to know except the truth. He still insists he had nothing to do with it.”

The interview was never broadcast after the prison authorities threatened to send Noye back to jail for a breach of his parole.

Mr Brown, 86, said: “I went over to him and said ‘thanks for coming, nice of you to pop in’, but I don’t believe you’ve turned up with your sons and grandkids to listen to me telling how you killed a police officer.

“And he said ‘I want to make sure you don’t say I’ve been dealing drugs’ and I said ‘I’ve never said that Kenny’.”

The retired detective told Noye he wasn’t going to change his presentation just because he was there.

“He said ‘mate, I wouldn’t expect you to and I’ll come up [on stage] if you want me to’.

“Can you think how he’s turned up with his family to listen to somebody talking about you killing the police? Now, you put logic on that.”

The bizarre story emerged when I rang Mr Brown after I’d been told about the meeting.

I also wanted to ask him about the recent BBC hit drama series The Gold which retold the story of the Brink’s-Mat heist at Heathrow Airport in 1983.

“It was an absolute shambles, far too much dramatic licence and the real story was so much better,” said the ex-detective, whose job had been to follow the trail of the 6,800 gold bars to the US and the Caribbean.

He said he chatted to one of the show’s writers for a long time in a phone call but then heard no more.

“They invented people, changed a bit here and there and made it politically correct in so many ways. I’m just very sad that that is what people will believe.

“And I couldn’t work out who my character was supposed to be. I could have been one of the female cops.”

He also criticised the portrayal of Noye, now 78, as a likeable jack-the-lad character when the truth about the double killer with a volatile temper was quite different.