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Football has fought a long campaign to fight prejudice in the game, but the reaction of two clubs to recent allegations has been shortsighted and damaging

The pictures above were taken less than five months apart. The first shows Liverpool lining up before their pre-season friendly against Valerenga on 1 August, the players holding aloft signs reading “Show Racism the Red Card”, a response to the shooting and bombing attack by the far-right gunman Anders Behring Breivik that killed 77 Norwegians, most of them teenagers, last July.

The second is part of the club’s officially sanctioned public response to the decision by the FA’s independent tribunal to ban Luis Suárez for eight games after finding him guilty of racially abusing Manchester’s United’s Patrice Evra. The contrast is extreme, the contexts, admittedly, make for a risible comparison. But somewhere between these images is a fault line down which the disconnect between football’s flagship position as a beacon against racism in British society, and what actually happens when a major institution is confronted with evidence of such behaviour in its own ranks, has tumbled this week.

It is probably no more than the coincidence of random events that sees two high-profile cases of alleged racial abuse played out alongside each other. Suárez and the accusations against Chelsea’s John Terry are separate if similar incidents and using one to predict the outcome of the other is a speculative dead end. What does and should bear comparison, however, is how both have been handled by the clubs involved from the moment the accusations became public, and how this squares with what has been a consistent and laudable campaign by virtually the entire body politic of British football to eradicate racism, sectarianism and, latterly, Islamophobia from its ranks over the last 20 years.

As its players became rich beyond imagination, as its core fanbase found itself priced out of gleaming stadiums, as the oligarchs snaffled up clubs for fun, as the ability to watch games on television was closed to those unwilling to pay through the nose, football’s publicity machine has required a narrative to shield it from well-founded charges that the game’s values have descended to little more than a brazen assault on the pockets of a captive fanbase.

Most big clubs run well-established charitable programmes and star players, largely enthusiastically, make themselves available for various hospital visits or publicity events for community projects. But against charges of increased alienation from normal society, football has had need of a well-structured counter-narrative. It is little exaggeration to say that in the past decade, anti-racism campaigns have formed the principal plank of the game’s efforts to present itself as a force for cohesion and solidarity in the often uneasy melting pot of British life.

This is not to deride those efforts as a cynical exercise. The atmosphere inside grounds is unrecognisable from the 1980s, where the sense of incipient violence and exclusionary hostility made attending a football match a dangerous proposition for most people of colour, and black players found abuse from the terraces and the thinly veiled prejudice of coaches a constant adversary. Campaigns such as Kick it Out and Show Racism the Red Card would be justifiably enraged at the notion that they are merely part of a fig-leaf to mollify the perception of football’s deeper

A brilliant late goal from Glen Johnson brings Kenny Dalglish’s Liverpool victory at Stamford Bridge

The early birds who found this page before I turned up got this to read. Here it is, preserved for posterity.

In the meantime read why André Villas-Boas reckons Liverpool are a title threat …

The Chelsea manager, André Villas-Boas, has refused to rule Liverpool out of the Premier League title race, despite Sunday’s visitors to Stamford Bridge having slipped 12 points behind the leaders Manchester City.

Three draws in their last three home games have seen Liverpool lose ground at the top of the table yet despite their inconsistent form, Villas-Boas insisted Kenny Dalglish’s side were still title contenders, because of their huge recruitment drive this year. “I’ve always seen them as title contenders because it’s been assumed by them that they would do it,” Villas-Boas said. “Dalglish has made the necessary changes to Liverpool for them to progress to title contenders this year.

“He made seven changes to the team, seven coming in, which represents the type of commitment the ownership have to put them back on title-winning ways. They are one of the biggest clubs in England and I always assumed they were challenging for the title.”

Continue reading here …

And here’s Paul Wilson on why Kenny Dalglish still has faith in Andy Carroll …

Liverpool visits to Chelsea have a special place in the affections of older supporters of the club. Stamford Bridge was where Kenny Dalglish himself scored the winning goal on the final day of the 1985-86 season to secure the title en route to Liverpool’s first Double in his first campaign as player-manager, his smile of delight going some way to erasing the unhappy circumstances of his appointment in the aftermath of the Heysel tragedy.

For younger supporters Sunday afternoon’s fixture means something completely different, recalling the memory of the dramatic last day of the January transfer window, when Fernando Torres shipped out to Chelsea for £50m, £35m of which was immediately reinvested in Andy Carroll. In what was almost a single transaction – that is the way Dalglish looks at it, anyway – the British transfer record was broken and a new high set for an English player moving between two English clubs.

Continue reading here …

3.30pm: So, a match with more needle than an Indian child-labour-based football-stitching factory, thanks to a long history of classic encounters, some more recent snorters, particularly in Europe, and the still-contentious defections of two players in 2011.

Talking of whom: Chelsea favourites who recently scored cracking goals against the Blues for Liverpool: Fernando Torres, Raul Meireles. Liverpool favourites who recently scored cracking goals against the Reds for Chelsea: Er, John Arne Riise?

Would you like to know the teams? Me too! What I can tell you is that both Torres and Andy Carroll only make the bench. Full line-ups imminent.

3.32pm: Here they are now! Meireles joins Torres on the Chelsea bench. Maxi Rodríguez makes his first league start this season, Craig Bellamy his second.
Chelsea: Cech, Ivanovic, Luiz, Terry, Cole, Ramires, Mikel, Lampard, Mata, Drogba, Malouda. Subs: Turnbull, Romeu, Torres, Meireles, Bosingwa, Sturridge, Anelka.
Liverpool: Reina, Johnson, Skrtel, Agger, Jose Enrique, Kuyt, Lucas, Adam, Maxi, Bellamy, Suarez. Subs: Doni, Carroll, Henderson, Downing, Spearing, Carragher, Kelly.
Referee: Martin Atkinson Lee Probert – a late replacement for the injured Atkinson.

3.40pm: Reds, how do you feel about the Maxi/Suarez/Bellamy/Kuyt forward line? Could be good, I think – workhorses on the wings to restrict Chelsea’s raiding full-backs and pace and movement up front to unsettle a suspect John Terry and David Luiz partnership.

3.52pm: “The absence of Downing from Liverpool’s forward line is a major plus,” alleges Niall Mullen. “He has (partially) escaped criticism as he benefits from not being Andy Carroll. He has been woeful though.”

3.55pm: Michel Platini in the crowd for this one. Either it’s still foggy in west London or someone’s having a fag in front of Sky’s camera.

3.56pm: The players are out and that can only mean one thing: an ad break.

4.00pm: “I’m wondering what percentage of EPL players Niall Mullen would classify as ‘woeful’,” rages Paul Taylor. “Would he, like many pundits here, look to dump a third to a half of each club after every season?” Er, I don’t know. Anyway, enough of this. Shall we watch some football?

1 min: Peeeep! They’re off!

2 mins: Two Chelsea attack-of-sorts so far, neither much kop. The first saw Ivanovic scurry to the byline before falling down in the act of crossing, sending the ball rolling a few yards to the nearest defender, and the second saw a long diagonal ball played up to Drogba, who was offside.

3 mins: Suarez’s first-time flick sends Maxi Rodriguez scurrying down the middle with John Terry for company. Terry remains ball-side of the Argentine, but does use a fair amount of arm in doing so. Cech clears.

6 mins: Kenny Dalglish’s record against Chelsea as Liverpool manager: Played 11, won eight, drawn three, lost none. Obviously most of those wins came against old Chelsea, but still: nice.

9 mins: Ramires is brought down from behind by Lucas, the pair of them then catching the neighbouring Charlie Adam, who falls on top of them. Ramires, having found himself in the middle of this unedifying Liverpool sandwich, takes a minute or so to recover.

10 mins: Malouda crosses from the left, deep and high to the far post, where Mata has time to measure his volley. It’s low, hard and across the keeper but missing the goal even before Skrtel clears.

12 mins: “What Paul Taylor sees as a problem I see as fine entertainment,” says Phil Sawyer. “I’d love to see each club lose half its players each season. You could paint circles to represent each club onto the Wembley pitch but not tell the players which one’s which and then get them to run to the circle of their choice in the style of ’70s TV gem Runaround.” I do like the sound of that, I must say. “Or hand to hand combat. I’m easy either way.” Nope, prefer the first.

12 mins: Bellamy gets down the right wing, and his low cross looks dangerous until Ivanovic clears at the near post. Charlie Adams’ corner is dismal.

13 mins: Then Glen Johnson goes on a run down the right wing. He beats two men without even trying, but then finds that running with the ball is considerably easier than deciding which other player he might pass it to, and eventually, just when something genuinely dangerous seems absolutely certain to happen, Cech just plucks it off his toe.

16 mins: David Luiz’s clearance is charged down by Kuyt. The pair leave the pitch together, Luiz clinging on to Kuyt’s shirt before giving him the most limp-wristed of slaps. “He just does silly little things,” whinges Gary Neville.

18 mins: Adam intercepts the ball midway through Liverpool’s own half and sprints forwards. He looks to have the beating of Luiz for pace – worrying indeed, for Chelsea – only for Suárez to latch onto the ball and be given offside.

22 mins: Drogba wins and takes a free-kick, 20 yards out. The ball goes a foot wide and bounces off the stanchion, only for Sky’s commentary team to start exulting over a stunning goal. It isn’t one.

25 mins: We’ve seen very little of Mata so far, that volleyed chance apart. When Chelsea work the ball to their right wing, it’s invariably Ivanovic who gets it. Liverpool will be quite happy aboutt his, I’d have thought.

29 mins: Kuyt steals the ball in midfield and releases Suárez, who has four men to aim at and only two defenders to avoid as he approaches the penalty area, but his attempted pass to Maxi goes straight to David Luiz, who is clattered by Lucas as he clears the ball. Lucas is booked.

30 mins: Suárez does a little better when he doesn’t have anyone to pass to, but he attempts one turn too many and loses control of the ball.

31 mins: Quite a good game this. No brilliant chances, but very much a sense that we could see one at any moment.

GOAL! Chelsea 0 Liverpool 1 (Maxi Rodríguez, 33 mins) Cech passes the ball to Mikel, who dithers and is dispossessed by Charlie Adam. From that moment Chelsea are in trouble. Suárez lays the ball back to Bellamy, who slides Maxi into enormous amounts of space on the left side of Chelsea’s penalty area, and he gets just enough height on the ball to beat the dive of Cech.

36 mins: I do love it when I write a MBM comment that isn’t instantly proved utterly idiotic (see 31 mins). “Well done on the foreshadowing in the 31st,” writes David Naylor. “Do you see the future often?” Sadly, no.

40 mins: Liverpool deserve their lead here. They’re disrupting Chelsea, who have now started to make basic mistakes in their rush to get rid of the ball before Lucas/Maxi/Bellamy arrives to kick it away from them. Lampard’s the latest culprit, gifting the ball to Suárez. And now David Luiz is at it!

42 mins: Luiz attempts to pirouette the ball out of danger 20 yards from goal while surrounded by red shirts. Inevitably he loses it, and brings down Charlie Adam – with his hand, I think – to stop Liverpool capitalising. Luiz is booked, Suárez skies the free-kick.

44 mins: David Luiz tries to catch Suárez offside but Ivanovic on the other side of the pitch is playing him onside. The Uruguayan’s eventual cross (possibly a shot) is deflected wide; Charlie Adam’s corner is rubbish, again.

45 mins: Last attack of the half and Chelsea win a free-kick, just outside the penalty area, after Malouda is brought down by Johnson. The ball comes in, and Johnson heads it behind. This time Mata’s delivery is headed wide by Luiz, and it’s half-time.

45 mins: Peeep! Half-time. A good game for the neutral, in other words it’s being played at a remorseless tempo and has featured ludicrous numbers of basic errors, most of them by Chelsea players. The right result, so far.

Half-time: Petr Cech’s new improved protective headgear is attracting lots of attention. “He looks like one of the Joker’s flunkies from Batman the 60s TV series,” writes someone who appears to be called “+0+ ‘@’”

Still half-time, but not for long: Chelsea substitution ahoy: Daniel Sturridge is coming on for Mikel.

46 mins: Peeeep! They’re off! Again!

47 mins: Sturridge will take Mata’s place, which on the first-half showing involves meandering around the right flank without seeing the ball. Mata moves infield, to play off Drogba.

49 mins: Mata gets the ball and a tiny amount of space from Lampard’s pass and plays the ball to Drogba, who shifts the ball onto his right foot and, just inside the penalty area, shoots over. Chelsea’s best chance for a long while.

50 mins: Sturridge finds an excellent eye-of-the-needle pass to find Mata in Liverpool’s penalty area, but Skrtel prods the ball out of play for a corner. Early pressure here from the home side.

52 mins: Liverpool’s corners have been dismal today. Adam, having made a stinking horror of his first-half efforts, cedes duties to Bellamy, who does little better.

54 mins: Nice interplay between Bellamy and Enriqué down Liverpool’s left wing, which ends with the Welshman being found in space, at the corner of the penalty area. His pass to Maxi is hit so firmly, though, that it’s basically uncontrollable and the chance is wasted.

GOAL! Chelsea 1 (Daniel Sturridge, 55 mins) Liverpool 1 Malouda is allowed to run, and run, and run a bit more, until he’s at the edge of the penalty area. His shanked shot turns into a perfect low cross, and Sturridge – booed not a minute earlier for pulling out of a challenge with Agger for a high ball – turns the ball home.

57 mins: What a save! Chelsea get a free-kick midway into the Liverpool half, on the left flank. Drogba curls the ball intop the area, Ivanovic (I think) flicks a header goalwards and Reina hurls himself down to turn the ball wide.

58 mins: So Chelsea appear to have discovered that the upside of Liverpool having four people pressurising their defence whenever they’re in possession is that there aren’t many people to pressurise their midfield when they get it.

62 mins: Once you get over the fact that the trophy itself has been auctioned off to an oil-rich emirate, it’s quite a good Premier League this year, innit?

63 mins: Drogba nearly breaks through, but Reina hares out of his area to head the ball away from danger. His clearance lands at the feet of John Terry, just inside Liverpool’s half, whose attempted 50-yard first-time lob lands 30 yards short and 40 yards wide.

64 mins: Kuyt is booked for pulling back Malouda.

66 mins: Ashley Cole’s excellent low cross bounces right across the penalty area. Liverpool replace Craig Bellamy with Jordan Henderson.

70 mins: Mata chips the ball into the penalty area. Malouda controls excellently with his chest and attempts an overhead, which flies just wide. Nice effort. Chelsea are playing much better this half, evidently.

74 mins: Either Liverpool’s players are just knackered, or they’ve been told not to close anybody down any more. Ramires just got an indecent amount of time on the ball, well inside Liverpool’s half. Then Drogba nearly creates a chance for Sturridge with a smart backheel.

75 mins: Terrible miss! Ivanovic crosses from the right wing and the ball clears Mata, Lampard and Drogba, all in the six yard area, to find Malouda in oceans of space at the back stick. He spears it wide.

77 mins: Liverpool substitution: Downing comes on for Maxi.

79 mins: Brilliant skill from Suárez to suck in Luiz and then nutmeg him. Ivanovic ends his run with a pretty violent challenge and is booked.

80 mins: Another terrible set piece from Charlie Adam. “Has anyone seen our midfield? They were definitely there in the first half,” wonders Phil Sawyer. “Did they decide to put their feet up and have a cuppa rather than coming out for the second half?”

82 mins: Fernando Torres is stripping off, and will get seven-odd minutes to make some headlines.

83 mins: And Meireles is coming on too.

84 mins: On they come, Torres replacing Drogba and Meireles coming on for Ramires.

86 mins: Liverpool’s best chance of the half: Henderson crosses from the right, Downing lays the ball off to Kuyt and the Dutchman sidefoots the ball five yards wide from the edge of the area. Nice move, ugly finish.

GOAL! Chelsea 1 Liverpool 2 (Glen Johnson, 87 mins) Brilliant stuff from Johnson, who controls a long ball excellently, cuts inside Ashley Cole, sprints towards the penalty spot and curls a left-foot finish inside the far post. Chelsea dominated the first 40 minutes of this half, but Liverpool have capitalised on their three.

89 mins: Andy Carroll replaces Luis Suárez. So the headlines have been made by a player coming back to haunt their former club. Just not the one everybody was banging on about.

90 mins: We’ll have three minutes of stoppage time here.

90+3 mins: I don’t like to jump on a bandwagon, but Carroll’s had perhaps five touches since he came on, and they’ve all been abysmal.

90+4 mins: Peeeeeeep! It’s all over, and Liverpool have won!

Conclusion: A very enjoyable football match, that, with a phenomenal winning goal at the end of it. The second half bore little resemblance to the first, which Liverpool effectively controlled. With Mata seeing more of the ball from a more central position, and more importantly with Ramires enjoying time in possession that Mikel was never allowed, Chelsea were more comfortable and considerably more effective. Credit to them, then, for engineering such a turnaround. But that’s all they’re going to get, because Liverpool nicked all the points. So, Kenny Dalglish’s managerial record for Liverpool against Chelsea: Played 12, won nine, drawn three, lost none. When does something like that stop being just coincidence and become very clearly the work of a higher being?

Premier League 2011-12ChelseaLiverpoolPremier LeagueSimon Burntonguardian.co.uk

The Liverpool striker has become a pariah in the Premier League thanks to little English football’s strange kind of logic

Having showcased his Hand of God tribute act at the last World Cup, and sunk his gnashers into a fellow pro while at Ajax, Luis Suárez was a ready-formed cartoon villain when he washed up on these shores last January. All that was missing was the stovepipe hat, cape, cane and elaborate moustache. Nyahh nyahh nyahh. Yet even so, it’s still something of a shock – a shameful, sorry shock – how quickly the Uruguayan has found himself to be the biggest pariah in English football.

Last weekend, in the early exchanges of Liverpool’s visit to West Bromwich Albion, Jerome Thomas needlessly stuck out a leg to impede the progress of Suárez. Progress being used there in its loosest sense; Suárez was scampering nowhere fast, out of the area, away from danger. Knocked to his knees, skittering across the turf like a distressed toddler who had just fallen off his bike, the Liverpool striker didn’t even claim for the penalty. But a foul is a foul, no matter how soft, and the spot kick was duly awarded. Suárez spent the rest of a brilliant display getting pelters from the Hawthorns faithful, and was loudly and signally booed off as he was substituted near the end.

All of which is fair enough. Fans are under no obligation to be even-handed; Thomas could have bowled into view behind the wheel of a 4×4, knocking Suárez 15 feet into the air off the bonnet, and some supporters would have still insisted Suárez deserved to be booked for jaywalking. But you expect a little bit of reason from the professionals and the media.

“I think the 25,000 people watching, even the Liverpool supporters, will probably agree with me that it looked like a very, very harsh decision, and there was certainly no intention to foul the player or give away a penalty,” opined West Brom boss Roy Hodgson after the game. Top marks to Roy for chutzpah, in attempting to corral moral support from a fanbase he’d systematically alienated with a series of self-serving statements during his time at Anfield, but otherwise the comment missed the point spectacularly. Benign intent does not cancel out clumsiness. And seeing Hodgson was in the mood to make assumptions on behalf of others, Liverpool supporters will probably agree with me that his complaint smacked of bandwagon jumping, Suárez’s sullied reputation a convenient out for his team’s piss-poor display, one grabbed eagerly with both hands.

For some reason – surreal, yet paradoxically predictable – a controversy over this most basic and clear-cut decision ran for most of the week. “It was a nice dive for the penalty,” suggested West Brom midfielder Paul Scharner a couple of days ago. “Suárez is very good at winning penalties. He’s one of the best on the planet, in fact. There was a general feeling among all the players that it was a soft penalty.” Soft it may have been, but a penalty it was nonetheless, and Scharner’s accusation of diving was at best myopic and befuddled. More uncharitably, seeing Scharner is in the business of shooting from the hip without a second’s thought for reputation, his claim was a flat-out lie. That such a statement has been left hanging, reported unchallenged in the press, his words reprinted in headline-point size, borders on the weird.

Many of football’s controversies are initially fuelled by television, the papers turning up 24 hours later with a couple of cans of petrol and a box of Swan, tittering excitedly. But to be fair this time round, ESPN attempted to nip this strange business in the bud. The co-commentator Chris Waddle was quick to call Thomas’s foul, as were his colleagues in the studio, though you do wonder whether Waddle was feeling some guilt for his dubious performance during Liverpool’s game the previous week against Norwich City, when almost every compliment given to Suárez was prefaced with a totally needless: “I don’t like the way he goes to ground sometimes, but…” It’s a strange state of affairs when a player’s contributions are constantly framed by their misdemeanours – Steven Gerrard’s finer moments have rarely been counterbalanced with his habit of starfishing himself to the floor, while Wayne Rooney has yet to be admonished upon Mark Hughesing one home for any previous arse-kicking red mists that may have occasionally befallen him – but this is the way of life for Suárez.

At one point during that Norwich game, Suárez was blocked off on the edge of the area. It probably wasn’t a foul, though you’ve seen them given. Play went on, Craig Bellamy within nanoseconds running the ball out of play down the left. At which point Suárez was loudly berated by the ESPN commentator Jon Champion for not springing immediately back up and joining in the move again. Denis Law, who could defy gravity like few others, would have struggled to raise as much as a wry eyebrow in a similarly allotted time. Nothing, sure enough, was said when Suárez stayed teetering on his toes a few minutes later, dragging a shot wide left of goal, despite having been nudged in the area and well within his rights to send the nipples turfward looking for the penalty. Michael Owen, England’s penalty-winning hero against Argentina in the 1998 and 2002 World Cups, would have had no compunction.

A few days later, in a Carling Cup game transmitted on the BBC, Suárez was standing in the penalty area at Stoke waiting for the dispatch of a corner, with his hands conspicuously in the air to demonstrate that he wasn’t grappling with any defenders. “He’s making sure the referee knows he’s fouling no one,” announced Guy Mowbray, before pausing and proudly quipping: “He’s fooling no one.” Lovely linguistic gymnastics, and what comedy, though hardly Reithian reporting; if Suárez displayed similar balance in the penalty area, he’d have an instant 10-match ban for simulation.

Thing is, nobody’s fooling themselves, and it would be hard to paint Suárez as an angel. This latest slew of accusations have come in the wake of Jack Rodwell’s disgraceful sending off in the Merseyside derby, for a tackle which saw the Everton youngster barely clipping Suárez. The Liverpool striker certainly made the most of Rodwell’s challenge, and you can berate him for patrolling the outer boundaries of the game’s laws – simulation is illegal, but exaggeration of a foul is only covered by the vague and highly subjective theory of gamesmanship – but then Rodwell was playing with fire having momentarily shown his studs as he thundered in for the tackle, surely the crucial factor in referee Martin Atkinson’s mistake. Suárez had done nothing technically wrong; indeed, Atkinson had whipped the card out with Suárez having barely hit the turf, suggesting the player’s reaction had little or nothing to do with what was unquestionably a dismal decision. Either way, it’s not much evidence with which to condemn a man. And given pretty much everyone in the league is at it anyway, singling Suárez out for opprobrium does make one wonder.

There’s a very large elephant in the room, of course, and it’s parping the sort of elaborate freestyle jazz solo that makes Albert Ayler’s Spiritual Unity sound like the theme tune to Hancock’s Half Hour: the allegations of racist abuse levelled at Suárez by the Manchester United captain Patrice Evra. Should Evra’s claims be made to stand, Suárez will have some serious talking to do, and quickly. Sympathy for his plight would suddenly be in extremely short supply, both outside and inside Anfield. But at the time of writing, that’s a mighty big if: he’s currently an innocent man, and must be treated as such.

Evra’s accusations do throw light on a certain irony, however, and lead us to what is the crux of the problem. English football is rightly proud of its efforts to kick out racism. The game has come a long way since the unreconstructed days of the 1970s and 1980s. Arguably even more of an achievement lies in the fact that nobody involved with the sport has since got complacent: the recent accusations involving Suárez and John Terry have been addressed swiftly and seriously, across the board by professionals, administrators, media and fans.

But while there’s a healthy zero-tolerance attitude to the overt stuff, a strain of unspoken, casual xenophobia remains. English football puffs out its chest in pride at its modern cosmopolitan nature, but despite the international roll call there’s still a bit of work to be done. In more than one quarter, Suárez has been advised to tone down the theatrics in order to get the crowds – and the media – off his back. Given that making the most of challenges, providing there’s no drift into simulation, isn’t against the laws of the game, and that such a grift is more widely accepted in other countries, there’s an unsettling undertone here: you can work in the country, but you have to do things our way. Extend that argument into any other walk of life, and you’re on very dodgy political ground. Exactly why football should be treated any differently isn’t made clear.

The pious demands aren’t, of course, directed at homegrown players partial to a wee dive: the aforementioned Gerrard or Owen, for example. When Arsenal’s record-breaking 49-game unbeaten run was ended, it was thanks to a brilliantly disguised but shameful tumble by Wayne Rooney, as British a bulldog as you’re likely to see. Francis Lee, also of these shores, practically invented the concept of going to ground in the mid 1960s.

There’s also a strange (and very British) kind of logic on display here: if we’re so annoyed by the over-reaction of certain players to being fouled, all quadruple salchow and pike, then instead of heaping abuse on the poor saps rolling about, would it not be better to ask the other players to stop kicking them? The last time we ended up here, in the summer of 2006, one of the best players in the world was nearly hounded out of the country for winking, while the man who perambulated up and down a man’s front tail was treated as the victim of the piece.

A desperately sad state of affairs, all told, and one which leaves poor old Suárez hanging out to dry. He is, sadly, unlikely to be cut much slack; you know how these things pan out. In many respects, while Liverpool’s player is within his rights to bemoan his lot, the club’s fans can’t complain too loudly, as all this is nothing new. Allegiances being what they are, Kopites didn’t man the barricades alongside their comrades at Chelsea when Didier Drogba was getting pelters for being regularly kicked around like an old sock. Nor did they fight the good fight side by side with those from Manchester United, when Cristiano Ronaldo was constantly berated for being repeatedly sent flying across Old Trafford on his shiny teeth.

Still, it would be nice to think this is where we all finally come together and draw a line under this nonsense, though the suspicion is that we haven’t quite matured enough. We’re getting the overt stuff down pat. The rest? Not so much. But let’s not be too harsh on ourselves. Much of this, you have to hope, is less true xenophobia, and simply the projection of jealousy and frustration at watching truly brilliant players going about their business. If Liverpool’s No7 wasn’t any good, few people would care. Cristiano Ronaldo, let’s remember, was vilified for doing stepovers. Stepovers. A skill. Thanks, Britain! Well done, us! Luis Suárez must wonder what he’s let himself in for.

Premier LeagueLiverpoolScott Murrayguardian.co.uk