Liverpool vs Manchester United: Bryan Robson and Alan Hansen reveal bitter rivals share a respect behind the scenes

The hostility between Liverpool and United fans, which was once toxic, is not matched behind the scenes, where the two clubs have forged close bonds

Bob Paisley (right), the former Liverpool manager, shares a joke with Bryan Robson (centre) and Alex Ferguson (left) on the United team coach travelling to Anfield on Boxing Day 1986 (Getty Images)

There is a YouTube clip, which does not require too much online detective work, that gives the clearest possible evidence of the enmity and hostility which have bubbled to the surface whenever Liverpool encounter Manchester United.

It is February 1986 and a youthful David Davies, then a touchline reporter for Match of the Day before climbing to the position of executive director of the Football Association, breaks into the transmission to reveal the full details of an attack on the United team bus as it approached Anfield.

“A brick rebounded off a window at the side of Mark Hughes,” Davies reported. “Then outside the players’ entrance at Anfield, as the players got off the bus, someone sprayed a considerable quantity of liquid, possibly ammonia, in their direction.

“An angry Ron Atkinson and his players ran directly on to the pitch, but 22 spectators, many of them children, suffered just as badly if not worse. One 12-year-old boy was taken to hospital.”

One United supporter ended up with a dart in his nose on one trip to Anfield in the 1970s, although the bad blood is not restricted to Merseyside. There have been plenty of incidents at Old Trafford, too.

Yet the attack on United’s players in 1986 led to a line being drawn by both clubs. The violence had begun to stain the most celebrated fixture in English football, which will be played on a European stage for the first time tonight when Liverpool host their bitter rivals in a Europa League last 16 first-leg tie.

While the 30 years since have been pockmarked too often with chants about the disasters at Munich and Hillsborough, the bloodletting has mercifully been banished from the stadiums.

Back in 1986, however, with United returning to Anfield on Boxing Day following the attack 10 months earlier, it required the presence of Bob Paisley, three years after retiring as Liverpool manager, to travel to the game on the visitors’ coach in order to promote a more harmonious image of relations between the two clubs.

“Bob came on to our coach at the team hotel,” recalls Bryan Robson, the United captain at the time. “He travelled with us to make sure there were no problems after the previous trip.

“I think it turned out to be tear gas that was directed at us a few months earlier as we got off the bus at Anfield. It actually missed most of the players, none of us were really badly affected, but the Liverpool fans got it worse.

“I can remember those Liverpool supporters being invited into our dressing room by our medical staff so that they could have their eyes washed to stem the effects of the attack.

“That was one of those occasions when the hostility between the two sets of fans boiled over but, thankfully, those days seem to have gone and there is a mutual respect and grudging admiration now, on both sides.”

The enmity is now largely confined to the songs of supporters on both sides. United fans continue to taunt their Liverpool rivals by chanting “murderers”, supposedly a reference to the 1985 Heysel disaster rather than the tragedy at Hillsborough, but that seems a rather flimsy defence.

During the toxic Luis Suarez-Patrice Evra racism saga in 2011, Liverpool fans fought their corner – and that of the Uruguayan forward – by chanting, “We’re not racist, we only hate Mancs”.

But while a febrile atmosphere will be generated by two sets of supporters who save their most biting hostility for each other tonight, behind the scenes relations between the two clubs have never been healthier.

In November 2012, United quietly donated tracksuit tops worn at Anfield to raise funds for the Hillsborough families’ campaign for justice, while Liverpool annually offer their respects, publicly and privately, to United on the anniversary of the Munich air crash.

In 1989, Alex Ferguson was one of the first to contact Kenny Dalglish to offer any assistance United could give in the wake of the Hillsborough disaster, with Dalglish writing to his long-time adversary in August of that year to thank Ferguson for his “kindness” and presence, and that of United players, at the funeral of 19-year-old Colin Ashcroft, one of the victims of the tragedy.

“The two clubs have always got on well, with a shared respect for each others’ achievements and standing in the game,” admits one senior figure at United. “We have the same issues, whether it is supporter-related, commercially or in the transfer market, and there is a lot of co-operation at senior level.”

Alan Hansen, who experienced 14 years of Liverpool-United rivalry during his time at Anfield between 1977 and 1991, insists that respect and admiration have always been high on the pitch too.

“We would always share a drink with the United lads after a game at Anfield and whenever we played at Old Trafford,” Hansen said. “You can’t escape the fact that the supporters don’t like each other, but there is nothing but the greatest respect between the clubs. They are just two very successful and historic clubs and the mutual respect is part of that.”

It has not always been a smooth relationship, though, with Ferguson intervening personally to prevent United’s Argentine defender Gabriel Heinze signing for Liverpool in August 2007 after he had been targeted by Rafael Benitez. “Gabriel was told, with no ambiguity, that historically, Manchester United do not sell players to Liverpool, and vice versa,” Ferguson claimed, in his recent book, Leading.

Ferguson relished stoking the tensions with Liverpool, despite repeatedly speaking of his admiration of the club – particularly in the wake of Manchester City’s rise to prominence under the ownership of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

The Scot would use an incident when Ryan Giggs and Lee Sharpe were asked for autographs, only to have them ripped up in their faces outside Anfield, as a motivational team talk, while making it clear that his only ambition at United was to “knock Liverpool off their fucking perch – and you can write that!”

For the former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher, though, the fear and loathing between United and Liverpool make no sense. “The intense competition between Liverpool and United is more geographical and historical, than logical, to me,” Carragher wrote in his autobiography.

“I’ve never found a proper explanation for why the bad blood has spilled over between the fans. As clubs, we seem to have far more similarities than differences. Perhaps Liverpool and United are a bit too alike and that’s the cause of the problems.

“Many of our fans hated United while we were successful and despise them even more now. Those deep-rooted feelings have never been there for me.”

Robson echoes Carragher’s sentiments. “You have the two most successful clubs in England, the two who are on a different level to everybody else in terms of success and global support,” he said. “But for me, the rivalry is about the two cities as much as the football clubs. They even argue over who has the best hotels, so it is more than football.

“But I know for a fact that the respect between the two clubs has always been there, perhaps because we have so much in common.”

With 122 honours between them – United narrowly lead with 62 – silverware and glory are what the two clubs share more than anything else. Both have suffered droughts in recent seasons, however, and a meeting in the Europa League sums up the current status of the two clubs.

But if a victory over the other can ignite a return to the days of dominance, it will feel as important as any of the previous 194 meetings.