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Liverpool may be regretting their stance on the Luis Suárez racial abuse controversy after Friday’s incident involving Oldham’s Tom Adeyemi

The Luis Suárez T-shirts Liverpool wore at Wigan were always a bad idea, quite the worst attitude struck in a solidarity campaign that brought the club’s decision-making into question if not disrepute, and the sight of supporters wearing them at the next home game at Anfield came with a queasy sense of foreboding. As several black sportsmen pointed out in the aftermath of the Wigan game, unqualified support for a player who had admitted bringing the colour of an opponent’s skin into an argument on the pitch was at best a confused message and at worst a dangerous one.

It cannot be said with certainty that the fan responsible for the alleged racial abuse of Oldham’s Tom Adeyemi on Friday night at Anfield was wearing one of the Suárez gesture garments, though police conducting an investigation have witness statements that raise the possibility. But it now seems clear that Liverpool’s handling of the whole issue will come back to haunt them for the rest of the season. A backlash against Suárez is fully expected when the player returns from his eight-match ban, particularly if he plays against Manchester United, and Liverpool will have been bracing themselves for all manner of terrace taunts and insults in their away games in the meantime. What no one could have anticipated was the race issue erupting at Anfield so quickly after the events of the last month, almost literally blowing up in the club’s face through the actions of Liverpool supporters.

This is hugely embarrassing for a club that quite rightly prides itself on zero tolerance of racism, and issues a booming reminder of that stance over the public address system before every Anfield kick-off. Most Premier League clubs do something similar in making supporters aware that racist behaviour is now an arrestable as well as an ejectionable offence, though you rarely hear the ground rules enunciated so loudly and so clearly as you do at Liverpool. This is not because the club have had problems with bigotry in the past, but because the club understood the anti-racism message from the word go and chose to stand squarely behind it.

That is why the defence of Suárez has proved so divisive. Liverpool never apologised, when a conciliatory statement on day one might have taken much of the heat out of the situation, and never appeared to consider the possibility that their player might have been even slightly at fault. Even now Kenny Dalglish’s stance is that the club has been harshly treated for reasons that it is not possible to make public, while the player himself has offered a qualified apology that pointedly fails to include Patrice Evra and insists on his own innocence, despite an admission that he used the word “negro”. There is no need here to reopen the debate about the nuances of what that might mean when uttered in Spanish, the FA have formed their conclusions and acted accordingly, and Liverpool have grudgingly accepted the outcome. Suárez is serving his suspension, yet possibly due to the ungracious way in which Liverpool have reacted to a sentence that most people beyond Merseyside feel is severe but justified, a lingering sense of resentment appears to have filled the void.

How else to explain why the Kop, with an enviable reputation for being both one-eyed yet fair-minded, should come to be sullied by apparently needless accusations of taunting a lower-league player because of the colour of his skin. The Kop is bigger than that, or should be. Liverpool are bigger than that, and used to be. It would be easy to blame Dalglish for all this, because his surly suspicion of outsiders and prickly reaction to any form of criticism has been on prominent display in the months following Evra’s initial complaint in mid-October, though no one could possibly accuse the Liverpool manager of promoting racist behaviour or being anything but horrified at the damage a tiny minority of fans at the Oldham game have done to the image of his club.

All the same, actions have consequences, and though the T-shirts at Wigan were generously viewed in some quarters as Liverpool circling the wagons and going on the defensive, the dangers of going it alone and disagreeing so markedly with the rest of football opinion can now be seen a little more clearly. It has already been noted that Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United seemed to act with greater knowledge and professionalism. As soon as Evra made his manager aware of his grievance, Ferguson took him to the referees’ room and made sure he obtained written statements. That done, Ferguson was content to let the FA deal with the case and abide by their instruction not to discuss the matter in public while deliberations were being made. Liverpool and Dalglish took a different course, and perhaps now wish they had not. If there is a lesson for football to learn from the past few weeks it is that the issue of race cannot be dismissed lightly. Any complaint should be taken seriously, investigated thoroughly and played by the book, not interpreted as an attack on the club or the integrity of its player.

That may seem obvious, but tribalism in football supporters is alarmingly easy to ignite. At Wigan a couple of weeks ago (why is it always Wigan?), a small minority of Chelsea supporters could be heard singing the Anton Ferdinand song (”You know what you are”). Ferdinand was nowhere in sight, of course, as Chelsea were not playing QPR; it was just the fans’ way of expressing their support for John Terry. Warped logic, if you like, but once accusations start to fly and reputations are defended, these particular disputes take on a life of their own.

One hesitates even so to link the unpleasantness at Anfield directly to the Suárez case, to guess at the motivation of Adeyemi’s alleged abuser(s) or to blame anyone within the club for the irresponsible actions of a spectator or two, though it seems fair to suggest that without the Suárez business it would probably never have happened. Maybe not all T-shirt wearers are really Liverpool supporters. Maybe the Kop was infiltrated by malign troublemakers from the other end of the East Lancs Road. But this time it simply cannot be Patrice Evra’s fault.

LiverpoolLuis SuárezRace issuesPaul Wilsonguardian.co.uk

• Uruguayan found guilty of racially abusing Patrice Evra
• Striker misses Tuesday’s game against Manchester City

Liverpool will not appeal against Luis Suárez’s eight-match ban for calling Patrice Evra “negro”, a decision that was followed by a remarkable and inflammatory statement from Anfield accusing the Manchester United defender of in effect making up his story and the Football Association of putting together a “highly subjective” case in favour of the Frenchman.

Rejecting the findings of the independent commission and questioning in forcible terms why Evra was “deemed to be credible”, Liverpool made it clear they believe Suárez has become the highest‑profile player to be banned for race‑related insults because of “an accusation that was ultimately unsubstantiated”.

Suárez then released his own statement in which he admitted using the word “negro” but made it clear that he did not accept the commission’s decision that, said aggressively, it was unacceptable.

“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,” the Uruguayan said. “Based on this, everything which has been said so far is totally false.”

The commission had used linguistic experts to examine the nuances of the Spanish language before concluding that Suárez’s defence, specifically that it was a term of endearment for someone with his upbringing, was “unsustainable and simply incredible” given that he and Evra had been arguing at the time. Although clearing him of being a racist, they believed Evra’s version of events that Suárez had used the offending word seven times in the space of two minutes.

His ban will take him to February when, by a quirk of the fixture list, one of his first matches back will be the trip to Old Trafford on 11

Defender who won the FA Cup with both Everton and Liverpool

Such is the rivalry between Liverpool and Everton that footballers rarely play for both Merseyside clubs, but Gary Ablett, who has died aged 46 of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, enjoyed long and happy spells with the two sides. No other player has won the FA Cup with both clubs. In 1989, Ablett won the trophy with Liverpool, who beat Everton 3-2 in an emotional match; six years later, he was in the Everton squad that beat Manchester United 1-0 in a memorable final.

Ablett was born in Aigburth, a Merseyside suburb. After leaving school he joined Liverpool as an apprentice in 1983, and made his debut as a substitute in a goalless draw with Charlton Athletic in December 1986. By the 1987-88 season, he was the established left-back. A rather gangly defender, he was one of the underrated players in Kenny Dalglish’s talented squad that included the famous attacking trio of John Barnes, John Aldridge and Peter Beardsley.

This was the last truly great Liverpool team and that season they played scintillating football, winning the First Division at a canter. However, what should have been their crowning glory, the FA Cup final, was spoilt by an unfashionable and unfancied Wimbledon team that included Vinnie Jones and John Fashanu in their ranks, who pulled off a shock 1-0 victory.

The following season was Ablett’s most successful for Liverpool, but it was bittersweet. He secured a permanent first-team place, missing just three league games all season, and won the FA Cup, but he was also present when Liverpool lost the league title to Arsenal at Anfield with virtually the last kick of the last game of the season. He was also in the Liverpool team that played Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup semi-final at Hillsborough on 15 April 1989 when 96 Liverpool supporters were crushed to death inside the ground. Ablett made countless hospital visits to meet survivors, and attended the funerals of 11 supporters in two weeks.

Ablett won another First Division title, in 1990, but Dalglish’s successor, Graeme Souness, sold him to Liverpool’s rivals across Stanley Park in 1992. According to Barry Horne, who joined Everton at the same time as Ablett: “It takes a brave man to move directly between the two clubs. The Everton crowd can be very unforgiving, particularly to anyone associated with Liverpool, but Gary won them over with his unassuming, no-nonsense manner.”

Such was the strength of Liverpool’s squad in Ablett’s time, he made only 147 appearances in almost a decade. At Everton, he was a regular first-teamer and played 156 times in four years. The highlight was the 1995 FA Cup. Everton had had a dreadful league campaign, failing to win in their first 12 games until Ablett uncharacteristically bombed forward to score the only goal in a victory against West Ham in November 1994. Everton had only just scraped to Premier League safety before beating Manchester United in the final.

Ablett was transferred in 1996 to Birmingham City, the third club for which he would make more than 100 appearances, before winding down his playing career with Wycombe, Blackpool and Long Island Rough Riders in the US. He then became a successful youth coach with Everton and managed Liverpool reserves to their Premier Reserve League victory in 2008.

A year later, Ablett was appointed manager of Stockport County, but the club, which was under administration at the time, was relegated from League One in his first season and he resigned. The Ipswich Town manager Roy Keane offered him a coaching role in 2010, but soon after joining the club he was diagnosed with a form of blood cancer.

He is survived by his wife, Jacqueline, and two sons and a daughter.

• Gary Ablett, footballer, born 19 November 1965; died 1 January 2012

LiverpoolEvertonLiverpoolFA CupGavin McOwanguardian.co.uk