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There will be plenty of familiar sights when Liverpool’s players run out at the KC Stadium next Tuesday.

They will do their usual stretches, they will go around high-fiving and hugging each other, geeing themselves up for a tricky Premier League away game.

And at some point, both prior to kick off and after the final whistle, they will take a moment to applaud the supporters packed into the away end.

As usual, those supporters will be people who have given their time and energy to travel, in significant numbers, across the Pennines on a Tuesday night just to watch their team. They are people who will have taken an early dart from work, and who will be returning to Merseyside in the early hours. Most of them will have been at The Hawthorns on Saturday, too.

At Hull, though, there will be something different about Liverpool’s away end. There won’t be as many Reds, there won’t be as many hardcore Reds, it won’t be as noisy or as happy.

A boycott of the game, organised by the Spirit of Shankly supporters’ group, is set to ensure there will be more than a few empty seats. It could be a significant step in the battle against rising ticket prices in English football.

Adult Liverpool fans attending the Hull game will be charged £48 to watch their side. That is in comparison with the same fixture last season, in which they paid £35. Earlier this season, Stoke City supporters were charged just £16 for their visit to the KC.

How can Hull City – or any club, for that matter – justify such huge differences? Tiered pricing is nothing new in the Premier League, and Liverpool fans are certainly used to paying ‘Category A’ prices at away matches, but let’s get one thing straight; it is unfair, and it needs to be stopped.

“Just because certain clubs are richer than others, doesn’t mean their supporters are!” Malcolm Clarke, the chairman of the Football Supporters Federation, told the ECHO on Wednesday.

The FSF argue, correctly, that the money the Premier League is raking in through its current TV rights deal should enable their clubs to lower ticket prices.

In fact, research has shown that clubs, boosted by huge increases in broadcast revenue, would actually be able to let supporters in for free, without losing out on income. A fanciful notion, of course, but accurate sums nonetheless. The FSF’s suggestion that supporters help in terms of generating an attractive product for the Premier League to sell to broadcasters, and yet often find themselves at the sticky end financially, is also fair.

Spirit of Shankly plan to hold a demonstration outside Anfield on Tuesday evening, while their team are warming up 130 miles away. Their conservative estimate is that up to 500 fans may attend, or at least commit to the boycott. A number of independent coach companies are already backing their stance.

Their beef, on this occasion, is with Hull and not Liverpool, but the Reds are by no means blameless on the issue of ticket prices.

They, like all Premier League clubs, charge significant sums for home games. They, like all Premier League clubs, like to use their supporters for marketing campaigns, trading off their loyalty and the atmosphere they generate, home and away.

“The feeling is that this is the straw that will break the camel’s back for a lot of people,” says Jay McKenna, chair of Spirit of Shankly.

SOS have been in regular dialogue with Liverpool over the issue, and further discussions are planned for the coming weeks and months.

Whether they will prove fruitful, time will tell. Certainly nobody will be holding their breath just yet.

But in the meantime, the stance of Liverpool supporters should be applauded, and backed.

At worst, it will bring the issue into the spotlight.

At best, it might just help convince a few people to alter change their mindset. Football without fans is nothing, after all.