Tom English: ‘Suarez support a stain on Liverpool’

After his racist conduct, Luis Suarez, left, has been blindly supported by a manager and team that should have known better

THERE are many riddles at Anfield Road these days. What is to become of Andy Carroll, the £35 million striker with two Premier League goals to his name this season? What do we make of Kenny Dalglish’s £36m outlay on Jordan Henderson and Stewart Downing, two midfielders who were brought in to add attacking nous and goal-threat and yet have just one solitary strike between them, plus a few assists?

Early days for sure, but as Liverpool toiled in December to get a solitary point in games against Wigan and Blackburn and then opened their new year with a thumping 3-0 loss to Manchester City, their travails begged a question about how much progress they are making under Dalglish. Some, but not as much as they ought to be, might be a fair assessment.

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We can even extend the audit to the golden boy himself, Luis Suarez. The Uruguayan, a £22.8m capture during a 12-month period in which the Liverpool manager has invested £115m in new players, is capable of wondrous things.

But for all his talent, wouldn’t you have expected him to have weighed-in with a few more Premier League goals this season than the five he has managed.

Steven Fletcher, for instance, has scored eight times for Wolves, a side sitting ten places below Liverpool. Ivan Klasnic, of Bolton, Grant Holt, of Norwich, Heidar Helguson, of QPR, and Yakubu, of Blackburn, are all ahead of Suarez in the Premier League scoring charts.

Of course, the argument will be made that Suarez is as much a creator as he is a scorer, but for nearly £23m, and God knows how much in wages every week, there is a right to expect him to do more of both more often than he has done so far this season.

They have won less than half their games in the league, but this has been a year of inconsistency, so they lie sixth in the Premiership. Not too good, not too bad. It’s probably break-even point for Dalglish.

The Liverpool manager gets an easy ride down south. There seems to be an assumption that he will get things right and, therefore, a reluctance to criticise him when performances and results are bad.

That’s fair enough. It’s his first full season back in the job at Anfield and he has enough credit in the bank to refloat the collective economies of Ireland, Greece and Italy with enough left over to tidy up the Treasury in Washington and the Exchequer in London.

He is trying to build something long-term and he’ll get all the time and all the understanding he wishes from the fans and Liverpool’s owners. Apart from Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, there is hardly another manager in the world game who is as attached emotionally and spiritually to his football club as Dalglish is to Liverpool.

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That’s one of his great strengths and, in the business of Suarez and the racism case, one of his great weaknesses. Dalglish’s reaction to Suarez’s eight-match ban for racially abusing Patrice Evra has been cheap.

He has behaved like a person who refuses to accept that one of his players – a blessed Liverpool man – could be guilty of such a thing. His club has attempted to discredit the FA’s investigation, they have accused Evra of inventing the allegations and only the other day, at a press conference, Dalglish displayed an obfuscation that was embarrassing for a man of his reputation.

Reporter: “Kenny, the wider world is pretty shocked that, if a player can call someone ‘negro’ and the player who is the victim in this takes offence, that there is no apology or contrition offered from your club.”

Dalglish: “I would have thought that, if you pronounced the word properly, you maybe understand it better. I think it was Spanish he was speaking and I don’t think you were speaking Spanish there.”

A serious question met with a ridiculous answer. But, then, there has been a lot of that from Liverpool in this saga. Dalglish suggested that certain things went on during the FA hearing. When asked what they were, he refused to say, only to suggest that he wished everybody knew what they were because our views might be different if we knew what he knew. It was a bottle of smoke. Nothing more.

The FA’s report that Dalglish seeks to discredit with glib suggestions of hidden facts was, let’s remember, 115 pages and 454 paragraphs long. It is a forensic analysis of the minutiae of Suarez versus Evra on that October day at Anfield, it is a detailed study not just of who did what, who said what, where they said it and when, there are also linguistic experts giving evidence of how they said it and how it might be interpreted not just in Suarez’s homeland of Uruguay and not even in the capital city of Montevideo, but in certain parts of Montevideo. As in, this phrase might be considered offensive in this area of the city/country and in this other area it might not. The rigor of the FA’s report, to a neutral’s eye, is unarguable.

The report blows Suarez’s claim of innocence sky-high...

“The impression created by these inconsistencies was that “Mr Suarez’s evidence was not, on the whole, reliable...”

“He had changed his account in a number of important respects without satisfactory explanation...”

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“Not only did we reject this evidence of Mr Suarez, but we found it remarkable that he sought to advance a case that was so clearly inconsistent with any sensible appreciation of what happened...”

“Mr Suarez’s account of his admitted use of the word “negro” changed several times. He seemed unsure of when the admitted use took place and what triggered it. His account seemed to change in an attempt to fit in with the video evidence...”

“We have rejected Mr Suarez’s case that he used the word “negro” once only and that when he used it he did so in a conciliatory and friendly way that was common and inoffensive in Uruguay. We have found so far that there were two uses and neither was conciliatory nor friendly...”

“He changed his account over time in a number of respects. This all combined to cast grave doubt on the reliability of the remainder of his evidence on the main factual disputes...”

Liverpool’s defence in this case was a contradictory shambles, a shameful attempt at clouding the issues instead of facing up to the reality.

None of what happened on the pitch that day made Suarez a racist. All parties, Evra included, don’t believe that he is. But he was, unquestionably, guilty of a racist comment no matter how many tee-shirts his team-mates wear and no matter how much their manager seeks to deny it.

Even the other day Dalglish was putting forward the discredited line about the word “negro” being a term of affection where Suarez comes from. Yes, it is. At least in certain parts of Uruguay. But not when it’s uttered in the midst of the kind of row that was unfolding between Suarez and Evra. At that point, it becomes a racist slur. That is what the immensely well-qualified and extraordinarily detailed linguistic experts said in the report. Dalglish, with what he calls a “restaurant” grasp of Spanish, continues to challenge the professionals whose expertise was accepted by everybody at the outset of the hearing. But not now, it seems.

This is a stain on Suarez, but it is a stain on Liverpool, too. No acknowledgment that offence has been caused, no contrition, just tee-shirts of defiance and blind loyalty from a man who should know better.