Interesting hearing all these experiences of Manchester.
For what its worth, I spent lots of time there in my twenties, and never had any trouble, I haven't got a strong accent, but people will know where I'm from. The biggest problems I had were with people who were OK when sober, but with a few drinks down them, the vitriol came out.
I had 2 examples, both when I was invited to my girlfriends works related events which put me in a difficult position. What was interesting was my girlfriends views of colleagues she used to respect completely embarrassing themselves. They were both way older than me, I was a guest, they obviously knew my girlfriend was a colleague, but that didn't stop them. Two faced, small minded hypocrites that can't take their ale.
Like a few have said, I love meeting people and having a drink and a chat, and most people I've met on that basis are absolutely sound. If people can't separate an actual person from rivalry based on football, then it tells you everything you need to know about them.
So while quite rightly, abuse or violence based on things like race, sexuality, religion are criminalised. It's OK to abuse someone for being scouse.
I think, and this feeds into the closed thread about corruption, if people are not from Liverpool and have never experienced Mancs as a scouser, they aren't qualified to comment on whether refs from that area are likely to carry some inbuilt prejudice into their reffing of Liverpool.
Everything Rob has spoken about is spot on. It's impossible to be brought up in some of those areas and not encounter anti scouse / Liverpool sentiment.