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Good evening all. Scott will here soon enough to type you through Liverpool’s trip to Bolton. If you get here before him, here’s Kenny Dalglish on Stewart Downing to keep you warm. Enjoy.

Kenny Dalglish has defended Stewart Downing, describing him as a better player than he envisaged when paying £20m to sign the England international from Aston Villa, despite the winger’s subdued start to his Liverpool career.

Downing has yet to score or create one league goal for Liverpool since his big money move from the Midlands, although he did register his first goal for the club in the FA Cup third-round win over Oldham Athletic, and growing criticism of the 27-year-old’s performances has prompted Dalglish to defend his summer signing. The Liverpool manager, who has been offered the Serbian striker Milos Krasic by Juventus, believes Downing is still adjusting to life at a higher-profile club and that it has been unfair to play the former Middlesbrough winger in several positions during his debut season at Anfield.

“Stewart is a better player than I thought he was going to be,” the Liverpool manager claimed. “I don’t think it has been too comfortable for him either because we have played him in three or four positions, so maybe we need to look at ourselves and say we have to be fair to him as well. He is better than what I thought he was. He is quicker than what I thought he was and he is quicker than Carra [Jamie Carragher] thought he was as well.”

Continued here

Premier League 2011-12Bolton WanderersLiverpoolPremier LeagueScott Murray
guardian.co.uk

• Talks had been mooted to improve relations after Suárez row
• ‘I do not see why there is any need for it,’ says Ferguson

Sir Alex Ferguson has questioned the need for peace talks ahead of Manchester United’s Premier League match against Liverpool at Old Trafford on 11 February.

Relations between the two clubs have been soured since the racism row between Luis Suárez and Patrice Evra began when the two sides last met in October. Liverpool’s attempts to defend their striker by questioning why Suárez’s word was being ignored in favour of Evra only served to exacerbate the situation.

Subsequently, Suárez was found guilty of making racist comments by an independent disciplinary commission and banned for eight matches. Yet even in accepting the punishment earlier this week, Liverpool – and Suárez – have avoided any suggestion of an apology to Evra.

United have said nothing on the matter, other than questioning the need for Liverpool’s statements in support of the Uruguayan prior to the disciplinary hearing. Privately they have been irritated by Liverpool’s stance, though, and Ferguson has played down the suggestion that discussions should be held between the two clubs before their next meeting, by which time Suárez will again be available.

“It is nice of them to do it through the press,” said Ferguson. “You would have thought they would come to Manchester United first.

“I do not see why there is any need for it. But I have nothing to say about it.”

Luis SuárezManchester UnitedLiverpoolguardian.co.uk

Manchester United’s full-back has seen his reputation take a hit despite Luis Suárez being found guilty of racial abuse

So far, there has been nothing from Patrice Evra to indicate what he thinks of the Football Association’s verdict, whether he thought the hearing was fair and what he makes of the backlash against him, but it is fair to assume there is vindication and, perhaps, the sense of a strange set of circumstances when a black footballer can be racially abused and yet come out of it with his reputation dismantled, too.

Liverpool have stopped short of branding him a liar, but only just. They have gone public that he is “not credible” and, on the first two days of Luis Suárez’s hearing, their lawyers made a great play of pointing out that when Evra exchanged punches with a Chelsea groundsman, Sam Bethell, in 2008, the FA disciplinary commission considered his evidence “exaggerated”. As recently as last week, Kenny Dalglish seemed convinced his player would get off on the basis that Liverpool planned to expose Evra as an unreliable witness.

Out of it, the perception has grown that Evra likes to “play the race card”. The idea has grown that he is trouble, that he will say anything, that he has previous. It has been a blur of spin, bandwagon-jumping and, in some cases, deliberate deception. The result, football being the business it is, is that because enough people have set out to discredit him, they have managed to do so through sheer weight of numbers.

The Manchester United full-back is not entirely blameless and if it is true that he had an Ali