FOOTBALL FAN STEPHEN Crean was asked “do you want to die?” before he was repeatedly stabbed by the suspected Huntingdon train knifeman.

Crean, 61, felt he “didn’t have much choice” but to fight back, as he defended himself with nothing but his fists when the man approached with a “sword-type thing”.

He was returning to his south-west London home after watching Nottingham Forest’s 2-2 draw with Manchester United on Saturday, when a young woman ran through his carriage yelling “knife, knife, there’s a man with a big knife”.

Crean said passengers ran down the carriage into the buffet car of the LNER train from Doncaster to London, adding: “There was nowhere to go. I didn’t have much choice.”

He said the knifeman asked if he wanted to die before he felt the knife in his arm.

“He asked me, ‘Do you want to die?’,” he told the PA news agency.

“He repeated it. Then I remember his knife going into my arm.”

Crean suffered multiple injuries.

There were 13 casualties in total, eight of whom remain in hospital, British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood told MPs today.

Crean said he had no chance to escape as the armed man approached but he managed to get into a train toilet after the confrontation.

Of his decision to fight back, he said: “Probably not many people would’ve done it, but then you’re leaving people behind you vulnerable.”

He has been described as a hero and said: “It’s lovely that people are saying nice things about me.”

Earlier on Monday Anthony Williams, 32, appeared at Peterborough Magistrates’ Court charged with 10 counts of attempted murder after several people were stabbed on the LNER train.

He is also charged with one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and one count of possession of a bladed article.

Separately, Williams is charged with one count of attempted murder and possession of a bladed article over an incident at Pontoon Dock DLR station in London in the early hours of Saturday, where a victim suffered facial injuries after being attacked with a knife.