• Liverpool midfielder could face three-match ban
• Gerrard would miss Manchester United match if banned

Steven Gerrard faces an anxious wait as the Football Association decides whether to take retrospective action against the Liverpool midfielder for apparently striking Michael Brown.

Gerrard appeared to lash out at the Portsmouth midfielder during Liverpool’s 4-1 win over the Premier League strugglers at Anfield last night and could face a three-match ban.

The two players were running towards the Portsmouth penalty area but as Brown tried to hold off the England international, Gerrard seemed to hit his opponent with his forearm.

The referee Stuart Attwell was only a few yards from the incident but took no action against the Liverpool captain. The FA are now expected to consult Attwell, with a three-match ban a potential punishment if Gerrard is deemed guilty.

If Gerrard is banned he would miss Sunday’s crucial match at Manchester United, the home game against Sunderland a week later and the visit to Birmingham on 3 April.

Only a week ago, Gerrard found himself in a similar situation for an alleged V-sign made at the referee Andre Marriner in the defeat at Wigan.

That went no further as the official said he had seen the incident at the time and decided it did not warrant any action, but Attwell will almost certainly be asked to look at this incident again by the Football Association.

However, the Liverpool manager Rafael Benítez is confident his captain will escape further punishment.

“I don’t think so,” said the Spaniard when asked if he was worried about retrospective action against his captain.

“I haven’t seen it but I was asking and I think it was nothing.”

Benítez also played down his immediate substitution of Gerrard, adding: “We were thinking of changing [Fernando] Torres, Glen Johnson and Gerrard and we did it.”

Portsmouth’s manager Avram Grant said he also did not see the incident but felt referee Stuart Attwell should have spotted it.

“I didn’t see it. I will speak with Michael Brown and then I will tell you,” he said.

“They told me the referee was four metres away from this so I think the referee needs to see from four metres what I didn’t from 40 metres. Personally I like Steven Gerrard. I think he is a good player and a fair player.”

Steven GerrardLiverpoolPortsmouthPremier LeagueJames Callowguardian.co.uk

Today’s blurb is back in business

Excuses, excuses, always excuses. Monday is never the Mill’s favourite day. Even when David Beckham hasn’t just suffered a career-threatening, World Cup ambition-destroying achilles injury the papers are full of nasty, irrelevant rubbish such as match reports, and sadly lacking in the true and genuine lifeblood of our nation’s favourite sport, namely baseless gossip and idle speculation.

And so it is that the first item on the Mill’s notepad this bright and sunny Monday morn reads: “Yogi, a Hungarian Vizsla, won the Best In Show title at Crufts.”

What’s a Vizsla, anyway? Could the Hungarian Vizsla be in any way related to a Polish Wisla? They sound extremely similar, come from the same part of the world and can both claim to be champions, but one is a brown-furred quadruped and the other is a football team from Krakow.

The Mill feels it has a special and unique bond with Yogi. No, not in that way, vile-minded reader. He, like us, is loyal, caring and highly affectionate, but we have both been bred to possess a keen thrill for the hunt and the nose to scent out its prey however well it tries to hide.

And so it was that we managed to scent out in today’s Times, of all places, news that Juventus would be willing to sell Gianluigi Buffon to Manchester City for around £32m. That’s £1m for every year of the not-exactly-one-for-the-future-is-he shot-stopper’s life so far.

Meanwhile Ramón Calderón, the only former Real Madrid president to sound a bit like the lyrics to Gary Glitter’s 1973 chart-topper I’m The Leader of the Gang (I Am), says the Spanish giants have “an obsession to go for Wayne Rooney“.

Over in Merseyside the Rhône Group, a New York-based private equity firm, is close to buying 40% of Liverpool. The money could be used a) to improve the team, Fernando Torres having called on the club to “make an effort and bring in important players and improve the quality of the squad”; b) sack Rafael Benítez, who, according to the Mail, has a clause in his contract guaranteeing that his £4m-a-year, four-years-to-run contract will be paid up, in full, within 24 hours of him getting the boot; or c) refinance a couple of loans and pay Liverpool’s owners a lip-smacking bonus. Time will tell.

World Cup news now, and the BBC is spending £1m on a bespoke studio located on the roof of Somerset Hospital in Cape Town so that Gary Lineker and the rest of their World Cup panel have a nice view to look at this summer. ITV, and everyone else, is to be based in Soccer City.

Work on the studio begins this week with an operation to remove seagull nests from the site. “The move,” reports the Sun, “is seen as a slap in the face for Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria.” Can Johannesburg be slapped in the face? Does it have a face to slap? The Mill, for one, doesn’t think so.

Let’s hope its glazing is fully bulletproof, though. You can never be too sure. Because in a not-at-all bizarrely alarmist report, the Star says that “thousands of football fans have recruited armed guards to protect them at the World Cup in troubled South Africa.” Apparently, even three months before the big kick-off, supporters petrified of the “poverty-stricken locals” are living in “fear for their lives”.

And finally, in today’s Gazzetta dello Sport José Mourinho gives a guide to his favourite places in London. These include Harrods, the Vue cinema on Fulham Broadway – “where I watched many musicals” – and a restaurant called San Lorenzo in Beauchamp Place, which serves an excellent fish soup. “When he wanted a trip outside the city,” the pink paper also reports, “he would choose Ipswich.”

Manchester CityJuventusWayne RooneyLiverpoolSimon Burntonguardian.co.uk