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• Mike Phelan says Patrice Evra will not be spared
• Full-back set for Anfield return after Luis Suárez row

The Manchester United assistant manager, Mike Phelan, has confirmed that Patrice Evra will not be spared playing at Anfield on Saturday.

United’s FA

• Taylor backs ‘very strong message’ over racist abuse
• Lord Herman Ouseley urges consistent tough stance

Luis Suárez’s eight-match ban for racially abusing Patrice Evra has been supported by the head of the Professional Footballers’ Association as “a very strong message to the rest of the world”.

The Uruguayan Liverpool striker is expected to appeal against the suspension, with his defence being that he was unaware that language acceptable in his country was viewed as racist in Europe. Liverpool reacted angrily to the punishment for the 24-year-old, who was also fined £40,000 by an FA independent regulatory commission.

Gordon Taylor, the chief executive of the PFA, said the sanction was an important message, especially after the outcry at Sepp Blatter’s remarks – later retracted by the Fifa president – that racism on the pitch should be settled by a handshake.

Taylor said: “This was an independent commission experienced in law and football and they must have had compelling evidence, and it sends out a very strong message to the rest of the world.

“I understand the point about cultural differences but if you come to this country all players have to abide by not just the laws of the game but the laws of the land as well. Referring to someone’s skin colour has got to be offensive – it’s self-evident.

“No one can say the FA have ducked this issue and bearing in mind outcry in this country over Sepp Blatter’s remarks it sends out an important message. This is a timely reminder for the FA, the PFA and the clubs to continue education programmes particularly for players coming from abroad: it is never right to make reference to a person’s skin colour or nationality.”

Taylor said the high-profile nature of the issue, with two of the biggest clubs in the world, would reinforce the message.

He added: “This is a situation involving two of our biggest clubs and a very sensitive time and it reiterates the message we want to get out. We are a multicultural society and a cosmopolitan league and players must have equal respect for people regardless of their nationality or skin colour.

“You can understand Liverpool being upset as they are a top-quality club with a top-quality manager but perhaps it is a timely reminder that players new to this country need to be advised about what is unacceptable.”

Lord Herman Ouseley, the chairman of the anti-racism campaign Kick It Out and former chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, also backed the FA’s punishment and urged the game’s authorities to maintain a tough stance.

Asked if this was the landmark case Kick it Out needed, Ouseley told the BBC: “It’s not that Kick it Out needed it, it’s football needs it.

“It is quite important that the football authorities take the decisive action where the evidence is there, where they carried out thorough investigations, to impose sanctions that would hopefully prevent other players from not maintaining the standards of conduct that are expected in any professional arena.

“And professional football is such that if players who are very expensively paid to perform their functions, providing entertainment, also have a code of conduct that if breached it’s professional misconduct and therefore it requires the sanctions that are to be imposed.

“It remains to be seen whether the FA will maintain a tough stance and consistency that is needed to see this through, we’re still in a process.”

The former FA executive director David Davies told the BBC the case was “one of the most difficult of modern times because of language and cultural issues”.

“The FA has been at the forefront of fighting racism over more than a decade, and using football to do so – perhaps way ahead of Uefa, let alone Fifa,” Davies said.

Luis SuárezLiverpoolManchester UnitedThe FAguardian.co.uk

• Lee McCulloch scores only goal of a drab friendly match
• Rangers benefit financially as 4,000 fans follow Liverpool

For Rangers, there proved a football benefit to a friendly encounter which almost certainly had finance as a motivating factor. Ally McCoist fielded a makeshift side but that was enough to impress against and beat a flat Liverpool 1-0, whose own much-changed starting XI cost something in the region of £70m.

It remains to be seen if British friendly matches in near-freezing conditions, after the domestic campaign has started, will take off. In Rangers’ case, though, this seemed a reasonable enough exercise.

The Rangers owner, Craig Whyte, has made it clear he sees a future for his club against top-flight English opposition. Matches such as this were not what Whyte had in mind when he made such comments, with the theory that Liverpool’s visit represented little more than a moneymaking exercise rather tricky to dispute.

Rangers’ qualifying‑stage elimination from Europe, after all, has left a rather large hole in their income stream. The level of funds bestowed on new players by Kenny Dalglish over the summer shows Liverpool are operating on another monetary level entirely, even if they were handed an appearance fee for the trouble of making the journey north. To their credit, 4,000 supporters followed them.

The buildup to the game was dominated by merely the latest off-field machinations at Ibrox. Rangers issued a statement which revealed they will withdraw all co-operation with the BBC, hours after their former finance director Donald McIntyre successfully applied to have £300,000 of the club’s assets frozen. He is not the first to do that.

Dalglish spared Steven Gerrard and Luis Suárez the trip to Glasgow. Andy Carroll started – but was ineffectual – while Craig Bellamy played the role of pantomime villain as the former Celtic player in the visiting lineup. Carroll’s struggles must be put in the context of the 41-year-old David Weir playing as a Rangers centre-half.

Bellamy whined a lot, picked a couple of token scraps, but was also anonymous as an attacking threat during his 65