BBC NEWS ONLINE: Premier League and EFL football matches 'over-policed'

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Dr Geoff Pearson, an expert in policing, crowd behaviour and sport within the School of Law at the University of Manchester, said it was "not sustainable" to police games in such numbers.

"All crowd science shows positive engagement with fans and police cuts down on disorder.

"One of the other drawbacks of large numbers of police trying to manage a large crowd, is inevitably you are going to be cancelling officers' rest days.

"That's problematic for communities [when officers have to take their rest days another time], and the officer may not be in the best mood to deal with football banter."