The former South Yorkshire police match commander at the 1989 FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough, in which 96 people were killed, has not been “unfairly singled out” for the charge of manslaughter, the jury at his prosecution has been told.

Richard Matthews QC, making the prosecution’s closing speech in the ninth week of the trial at Preston crown court, said bad design of Sheffield Wednesday’s Hillsborough ground, poor planning, and mistakes made by others may have contributed to the disaster at the match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest.

However, he told the jury, David Duckenfield was ultimately in charge of the safety of 54,000 people, having been appointed to chief superintendent 19 days before the semi-final of 15 April 1989.

“Others may have failed, others may have made mistakes,” Matthews said. “No one else was the match commander ... He was the person with ultimate responsibility on the day.

“We suggest it is not unfair to prosecute David Duckenfield, and certainly it is not unfair to ask you to look at the evidence and, where you are sure, to hold him accountable for his actions and failures.

“What is unfair is that thousands of fans attended that football match that day; 96 didn’t come home.

Matthews explained that the basis of the prosecution’s case is that Duckenfield’s failures to prepare adequately for the semi-final, his admitted ignorance of the “geography” of the Leppings Lane end, where just 23 turnstiles were allocated for 24,000 people with tickets to support Liverpool, and his failures to protect them from an “obvious and serious risk of overcrowding and crushing”, amounted to gross negligence. The trial judge, Sir Peter Openshaw, directed the jury on Wednesday that for negligence to be gross, it must be considered so “bad, reprehensible and blameworthy” as to be criminal.

Matthews told the jury of six men and six women that they should base their decision on the evidence.

“It’s not about sympathy for the 96 people who lost their lives,” he said “We’re not going to ask you to weigh up their tragedy and all the many people affected by their tragedy. Equally, it’s not about sympathy for David Duckenfield, who did not set out to kill or cause the deaths.

“He is not charged with doing anything on purpose to kill people. He is charged with failing in his duty in an extraordinarily bad way.

“Do not be influenced by sympathy. Look at the hard evidence in this case.”

Addressing the question of Duckenfield’s inexperience, commanding his first match at Hillsborough having not policed there since the 1979-80 season, Matthews said he failed to take “the proper care” when he accepted the job, to compensate for his inexperience and make adequate preparations.

“We say inexperience can never be an excuse in the circumstances … because all inexperience should mean to someone taking proper care is that they take more care to overcome inexperience.

“You can be inexperienced but competent … If you are inexperienced it should be obvious that you may have to prepare better to make sure that you are competent.”

The prosecution allege that Duckenfield took command on the day without adequate knowledge of the ground’s “hazards and dangers and problem areas”. He did not realise that the Leppings Lane turnstiles were a geographical bottleneck, Matthews said, that people coming through the turnstiles were faced with a tunnel opposite with a large “Standing” sign above it, which acted “like a magnet” to draw them into the terrace’s central “pens”, 3 and 4.

The case, he said, is not based on hindsight, but on what should have been foreseeable to a “reasonably competent” match commander. However, Matthews said the scale of the disaster, the death of 96 people and crushing injuries to many more: “Is a measure of the serious risk of death that existed understandably, if pens 3 and 4 were full. Anyone knowing and thinking about that geography would have realised there was an obvious and serious risk of death.”

The jury has heard that after 2.30pm a large crowd built up at the turnstiles, which developed into a dangerous crush. Matthews said Duckenfield had taken no action to deal with the crush outside, before it became an emergency.

“In effect, the match commander on this day contributed to an emergency by failing to take action to prevent it,” he said.

At 2.52pm, Duckenfield gave the order to open a large exit gate, C, to alleviate the crush outside. Many of the 2,500 people who came in saw the tunnel in front of them and went into pens 3 and 4, where the lethal crush took place. Duckenfield, with a view from the control room of how full the pens were, and with screens showing how many more people were yet to come in, failed to recognise the danger and give any thought about where the people would go, Matthews said.

Duckenfield should have known, he said: “If uncontrolled entry into that area was allowed, tragedy would follow.”

Referring to the evidence Duckenfield gave at the 2014-16 inquests, which has been read to the jury, Matthews said: “Quite frankly, it may be capable of being reduced to this: the failures, the breaches that are alleged against [David Duckenfield] are failures that he admitted when he gave evidence at the Warrington inquests in 2015.”

Benjamin Myers QC, representing Duckenfield, is expected to give his closing speech for the defence on Friday and Monday.