The ongoing row over comments made by local radio and TV host Steven Cohen on the 20th anniversary of the Hillsborough tragedy took another turn this week when  Liverpool Football Club  issued a statement denouncing  what they called ‘Hillsborough Radio Lies’.

     The official statement reads: "Liverpool Football Club totally condemns the comments regarding the Hillsborough disaster made by the radio and TV broadcaster Steve Cohen (pictured).

     "Mr Cohen has obviously never taken the time to read the Taylor Report which stated clearly that ticketless fans were not a contributory factor or responsible for the events of that day.

     "To use the 20th anniversary of the disaster to repeat false claims about Liverpool fans (which Mr Cohen first broadcast and then apologised for in 2006) is even more unacceptable."

     Cohen, who hosts World Soccer Daily on Sirius FM satellite radio and the Fox Football Fone-In on the Fox Soccer Channel,  claimed in his show on Monday, April 13th that at least part of the blame for the 1989 Hillsborough tragedy lay with Liverpool fans who did not have tickets to the FA Cup Semi-Final with Nottingham Forest at which 96 fans died in a crush at the Leppings Lane end. His comments have inflamed Liverpool supporters (and indeed those of other clubs) around the world, and his shows’ sponsors are currently the subject of a boycott by Liverpool supporters’ clubs based in North America. On Tuesday Celtic Fan Clubs of North America were also reported to have joined the boycott.

     Among the advertisers who have pulled their support of the show are the respected English soccer magazine 4-4-2 and Fado, the US-based nationwide chain of Irish-themed pubs.

     A statement from the New York branch of the Liverpool supporters club said: “If Steve Cohen wants to smear all of us Liverpool fans with these lies, then let us exact a price on him. We want him gone off the air. Gone from Fox, gone from Sirius, gone from the airwaves…..”

     Cohen issued an on-air apology this week for his comments, but  the manner in which the apology was delivered, - ‘unrepentent in tone and defensive in delivery’, to quote one blogger, and the clear sound of the paper from which he was reading being rolled into a ball at its conclusion, are unlikely to mollify his critics, some of whom have resorted to death threats, according to Cohen himself.