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• League One side release statement on website
• Follows alleged racist abuse of Oldham defender

Oldham Athletic have praised Liverpool and Merseyside police for their handling of the alleged incident of racist abuse directed at Tom Adeyemi during Friday’s FA Cup tie at Anfield.

On Sunday, police investigating the incident arrested a 20-year-old man from Aintree, Merseyside, on suspicion of a racially aggravated public order offence. He was later released on bail.

Liverpool also issued an official apology to Adeyemi and, in a statement on their website, Oldham thanked both parties for their continued communication and support throughout the investigation to date.

“The chairman and directors of Oldham Athletic football club would like to thank Liverpool football club and officers of Merseyside police for their concerns and painstaking efforts in investigating the circumstances surrounding the incident involving Tom Adeyemi,” the statement said.

“Excellent communication has been maintained and the club and player have been notified of every detail during the progress of the investigation. The professional standards applied throughout have been praiseworthy.”

The statement continued: “The club would also like to thank the numerous fans from Liverpool and Oldham, and also those from around the country who have sent letters of support to Tom. This type of incident is contained within a minority and should not deflect from a superb match that was enjoyed by both sets of club officials and fans.”

OldhamLiverpoolguardian.co.uk

The future of football needs strong and decisive leadership especially for the next generation of young people

Liverpool FC need to take a hard look at themselves and how they have responded to the complaint and the investigations into the allegations of abuse in the Patrice Evra/Luis Suárez case.

Throughout the entirety of the proceedings, over the past three months, all we have heard are denials and denigration of Evra. Since the publication of the 115-page report of the findings of the FA’s independent commission, Liverpool’s vitriol has increased. Suárez’s attempt at a belated apology is nothing short of lamentable. I cannot believe that a club of Liverpool’s stature, and with how it has previously led on matters of social injustice and inequality, can allow its integrity and credibility to be debased by such crass and ill‑considered responses.

At such a historic time in Britain, Doreen and Neville Lawrence have taught and inspired us never to give up the fight for equality, justice and fair treatment following Wednesday’s sentencing of Gary Dobson and David Norris for the murder of their son Stephen Lawrence in 1993.

With all these things, you come out of it with more credit if you hold your hands up. OK, Liverpool may have thought they had to defend their player as he is innocent. But if the club does not carry out a thorough investigation, how can it understand that Suárez said things which are not acceptable, but that he didn’t comprehend this due to his background?

If this is the case, Liverpool have failed him. Because they have not told Suárez what the club’s expectations are; that they have a zero policy towards racism. If he is ignorant of what is required of him, Liverpool should be asking: how come we have got a contract with the player?

Unless, of course, Liverpool are saying that they have explained to Suárez what the club want and he has defied them.

In any other sector, if someone makes a claim of racially motivated or abusive behaviour, an employer has to investigate if they are competent because this may be damaging to the business. Clubs in these cases don’t seem to be. And when it’s a high-profile incident involving a big-name player, they want to say, unequivocally, we defend our player 100%. Why are people not showing leadership and apologising, saying that we won’t do it again, and ask that they can move on?

Liverpool have been particularly hypocritical. You can’t on the one hand wear a Kick It Out T-shirt in a week of campaigning against racism when this is also happening on the pitch: it’s the height of hypocrisy. Liverpool players wore a T-shirt saying: “We support Luis Suárez”, seemingly whatever the outcome. This was a dreadful knee-jerk reaction because it stirs things up.

And, then, this was followed, after the verdict, with a kind of stance that says: “Hey, we support anti-racism and Kick It Out. But we’re not sorry. All we are really saying is that we blame someone else, not us.”

In the wider context of racism throughout our society there are issues. Undoubtedly there are still areas in this country you would not feel comfortable being in, and that is not just on grounds of potentially being racially abused.

I do think that the police service is much better than it was in 1993, when Stephen Lawrence was murdered. You can actually raise matters of race in a police station and get a degree of sensitivity that gives you comfort that you are going to be treated in a fair manner.

What we’ve got to do is keep building on that. We had the MacPherson Report in 1999, which rolled into the Race Relations Act of 2000 and then things did move forward, but there’s been a rolling back regarding equality since 2005, due to the reaction to the July bombings in London. And this has continued with the present government and the suspicion that is held of a multicultural society. It’s important that we sharpen up our focus regarding these matters.

This is a momentous time for us. Four million people play football in this country and this weekend there will be many kids in parks and on pitches: they need to know that if they misbehave, they can’t get away with it. That is the big issue.

Since the incident we’ve not heard a word of complaint from Evra about how his character has been besmirched by Liverpool. This is surely something the FA and the PFA and the whole of football should be concerned about: we can’t have a situation where there is just one side on the attack.

Surely the new owners, with their experiences of equality and inclusion in the US, can see how their brand is being

Liverpool looked to have seen the light in not appealing against the verdict but club and player still refuse to accept they are in the wrong

At last Liverpool have seen sense. At least that was the initial reaction when news broke that the club would not be appealing against the eight-match ban and £40,000 fine imposed on Luis Suárez for racially abusing Patrice Evra. What we soon learned, however, was that Liverpool had no intention of showing any contrition, Suárez would not be apologising and, in the eyes of the club, the Football Association is to blame for damaging the reputation of a man that was found to have used the word “negro” seven times.

The blind loyalty that Liverpool have shown towards Suárez throughout this sorry saga continues to shine through despite the verdict two weeks ago and the publication of a remarkable 115-page document, compiled by the FA’s independent panel, that presented a compelling case against Suárez and, at the same time, highlighted the shambles that the Merseyside club had made of trying to defend the player.

Accepting the guilty verdict represented a chance to move on; instead Liverpool have poured fuel on the fire and thrown in a couple of sticks of dynamite for good measure. In Liverpool’s statement, the FA and the three-man panel it selected is accused of constructing “a highly subjective case” against Suárez. There is also stinging criticism of the report, which is described as “clearly subjective” and, as a result, held responsible by Liverpool for tainting Suárez’s image.

And then we come to Suárez, whose own statement screamed his innocence and flew in the face of everything the linguistic experts told the FA panel when they analysed what the player said to Evra at Anfield, the context in which it was said and how his comments would be interpreted in his homeland and beyond. The experts’ conclusion, lest it be forgotten, was that Suárez’s remarks would be “considered racially offensive in Uruguay and other regions in of Latin America”.

The report pointed out that while this information was useful it “is the commission’s task to decide whether the use of the word in England is abusive or insulting”. Suárez, judging by his statement, has still not grasped this fundamental point and also conveniently ignored the acrimonious context in which he used the word “negro” when he disputed the findings of the language experts, Professor Peter Wade and Dr James Scorer.

“In my country, ‘negro’ is a word we use commonly, a word which doesn’t show any lack of respect and is even less so a form of racist abuse,” Suárez said. “Based on this, everything which has been said so far is totally false. I will carry out the suspension with the resignation of someone who hasn’t done anything wrong and who feels extremely upset by the events.”

This was merely in keeping with Liverpool’s approach throughout, which has smacked of arrogance at times, no more so than when those ridiculous T-shirts supporting Suárez were worn at Wigan, and on other occasions raised questions about how seriously they took the issue.

We learn in the report that when Phil Dowd, the fourth official at Anfield, knocked on the home dressing room door shortly after the Manchester United match to ask Dalglish – who had been made aware of the allegations at this point – that Andre Marriner, the referee, needed to see him and Suárez in the officials’ room, the Liverpool manager, alluding to the rules that are normally in place, “made a joke about having to wait 30 minutes before speaking to the referee.” When Dalglish did eventually visit Marriner (without Suárez), his response to Evra’s accusations was: “Hasn’t he done this before?”

Liverpool should have spent less time worrying about discrediting Evra and more time getting their testimonies right. Suárez, after being asked the same question six times in the hearing, was forced to admit it was not true that he had pinched Evra to defuse the row, as he had claimed in his witness statement. Peter McCormick, Suárez’s representative, tried to explain this confusion, that cast further doubt on the credibility of the player’s evidence, on “bad drafting”.

Every bit as bad was the moment in the report when we learn that Damien Comolli, the club’s director of football, and Dirk Kuyt, the Liverpool midfielder, changed their statements after realising that Suárez had given a different account to them. It is cringeworthy reading Kuyt’s attempt to deal with this discrepancy in his witness statement. “I am aware that LS will state in evidence that what he actually said in response to the remark from PE was (translated into English) “Why, black?” or “Why, negro?” and I am perfectly happy to accept that this is what he said. I may have misunderstood what he was saying or perhaps sought to interpret what he was saying as what I thought LS might have said when, in fact, it was not what he said.”

Yet according to Liverpool’s statement before the Manchester City game, the mistakes have been made by the commission rather than the Anfield club or Suárez. If Liverpool truly believed that was the case they would have appealed. Instead they took the sensible decision before pressing the self-destruct button. Again.

Luis SuárezLiverpoolThe FAStuart Jamesguardian.co.uk