It is still utter nonsense. Crowd estimates, especially for outside events (i.e. those not contained by stadia) are often wildly inaccurate and estimates made by police are no exception to this rule. To place into perspective how unlikely this figure is it is the equivalent of 9 out of every 10 people from the entire Mersey metropolitan area - not just the city of Liverpool - coming out onto the route.

There is a more telling point here though. You are prepared to be credulous about this unlikely estimate because (i) you want it to be so: you want to believe that your team are so loved that an improbably large amount of people come out to show their support for them; (ii) an 'authority', a part of the establishment, tells you that it is so. Contrast this, if you will, to your attitude to those who practice religion. They want and believe things to be true too. But you say that their reliance on belief, rather than reliance on logic and probability, is 'worshipping at the temple of stupidity'.

So, just to be clear: at which temple do you worship?