Sunday 12 February 2012

Dalglish's Dignity Destroyed


How long before we see football making headlines for what happens on the pitch? Yesterday Spurs hammered Newcastle, Norwich and Swansea served up an end-to-end goalfest and, almost unnoticed, Manchester United defeated their arch-rivals Liverpool with two strikes from the in-form Wayne Rooney. Sadly scandal and outrage have once more undermined the efforts of the players to entertain fans growing increasingly tired of seeing the game’s name dragged through the mud.

After weeks of racism, court cases, captaincy rows and red cards, the stage was set for Old Trafford to remind us why it is that football is known as the ‘beautiful game’. Instead, we were served up an ugly and undignified mess which looks set to prolong and exacerbate the mutual enmity between two of the Premier League’s biggest clubs.

All it would have taken was a gesture: a brief touch of flesh on flesh which might have doused the flames of this most combustible fixture. Instead, Luis Suarez’s immaturity ignited the tinderbox and his manager poured fuel on the flames.
Despite myopic Liverpool fans’ protestations there is only one person to blame for the non-handshake: Suarez. His decision to ignore Evra’s offered hand was immature, idiotic and, worse of all, premeditated. Certainly Kenny Dalglish, had seemed convinced the player would make the important gesture: Suarez knew otherwise and, in an instant, undermined his manager and his once-proud club.

Perhaps Dalglish’s fervent and misguided support of the player was inspired partly by embarrassment and anger at him – he certainly lost his cool in a way rarely seen from a man more usually associated with taciturn and monotone post-match interviews. Sadly his reaction was inevitable after the tunnel-visioned support he has offered his player throughout this whole farrago.

From the very outset, Dalglish has fostered a siege mentality which has seen Liverpool FC close ranks to protect their player. In the Scotsman’s eyes, the criticism of Suarez has become a witch-hunt – a media conspiracy propagated by Sky Sports News and designed to deliberately harm and hound his controversial striker. This view is utter nonsense, of course. Suarez is under such scrutiny thanks only to his profile, his behaviour and his refusal to apologise to a man he wronged.

Kenny Dalglish’s half-baked conspiracy theories hold absolutely no water. And he has absolutely no evidence to back them up. When the FA released the water-tight 115 page document proving Suarez to have racially abused Evra, Dalglish hinted that the full truth had not been heard. But he failed to provide the required evidence to prove Suarez’s innocence. And given the club’s utter conviction of his innocence it seems strange that they didn’t lodge any form of appeal.

Instead, we’ve seen ill-advised T-shirts in support of Suarez, heard Dalglish welcome Suarez back from his spell on the sidelines by insisting that “he should never have been out in the first place” and now, an absolutely astonishing post-match attack on Geoff Shreeves, Sky Sports and anyone who would listen. Daniel Taylor summed it up brilliantly in The Observer: “outraged by everything, ashamed of nothing”.

His strident defence of his player was shocking and appalling. Pleading ignorance of Suarez’s refusal of Evra’s hand was silly at best. But furiously suggesting that Shreeves was “bang out of order for blaming Luis Suarez for anything that happened here today” was absurd beyond belief. Seeing one of the game’s greats acting in such a manner was hugely embarrassing – not least because he missed an ideal opportunity to take the sting out of the situation. All Dalglish needed to do was point out that Suarez’s actions didn’t help the atmosphere and that he’d have a word with the player in private. Instead, he fanned the flames.

Admittedly, Manchester United were not blameless. Evra’s celebrations at the final whistle were clearly cathartic – a massive pressure relieved in front of his own fans – but were certainly over the top and hardly likely to calm the situation. Sir Alex Ferguson rightly criticised the left back.

The United manager did go over the top in his criticism of Suarez, however. Having kept his counsel for so long, he then exploded. He was clearly incensed by the striker’s conduct during the day but his suggestion that Suarez ought never play for Liverpool again was an area he ought to have kept his nose out of. Dalglish neither wants nor needs Ferguson’s attempts to destabilise Liverpool FC – he’s doing a good enough job all on his own.

8 comments:

  1. So much I want to say about this but I wouldn't know where to start. Yesterday was pretty much an undignified mess from start to finish, just as it was always likely to be.

    However, the FA's written report 'water-tight'? Absolute bollocks. Lets be honest, Suarez was found guilty (of a criminal offence) on the balance of probability, and with a total lack of tangible evidence. I've seen it written and heard it said all over the media the last few weeks how Suarez was 'proved to have racially abused Evra seven times'. It's just a total falsehood, there was not a single shred of proof to back up either players claims as to what actually happened in that penalty box, and the disciplinary panel basically had to decide who they believed. Of course, all the clubs are signed up to and agree to be governed by the FA's disciplinary process, so it's hard to have sour grapes when a particular case goes against you when you are a willing participant in the process. However, surely when the allegations are so serious, and have such great ramifications for those involved, any allegations made such as the Evra / Suarez affair, or allegations made which are basically a criminal offence, should be subject to a higher threshold of evidence than the 'balance of probability'. Criminal court cases require a 'burden of proof' and that HAS to be the case in situations such as this. Like him or loathe him, and ignoring the events of yesterday, Suarez has had his reputation absolutely destroyed and not one single piece of evidence exists that would condemn him in a court of law.

    Putting football tribalism aside, I cannot see how ANYONE can be comfortable with the situation.

    And whilst acknowledging that Liverpool's PR department and Ian Ayre have totally mishandled the situation, all too often hiding in the shadows and pushing Dalglish out into the spotlight to handle the situation on his own, the way the media have covered this story has been nothing short of disgusting.

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  2. I beg to differ, Chris.

    The only shred of evidence required to prove Suarez guilty of racially abusing Patrice Evra is this: he admitted it.

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  3. "he admitted it"? Again a total falsehood, and one that for whatever reason is pretty much accepted as fact in the public domain. It's a narrative that has been followed by the vast majority of journalists who, upon reading their works give the impression that they haven't actually read the FA report. The argument appears to be that having admitted to using the term 'negro' once, irrespective of context and cultural nuances, then Suarez MUST be guilty.

    I know you've read the report so I'm surprised you've reached the same conclusion.

    I'm assuming that by saying 'he admitted it' you're referring to Suarez voluntarily telling the FA he used the phrase "Por qué, negro?".

    Obviously in a case as sensitive as this the FA, as you know, instructed a pair of Spanish / South American language / cultural experts to produce a report, where they examined Patrice Evra's version of events, and also Suarez's. With regards to Suarez's evidence they found that -

    para 194 - The experts concluded their observations on Mr Suarez's account as follows. If Mr Suarez used the word "negro" as described by Mr Suarez, this would not be interpreted as either offensive or offensive in racial terms in Uruguay and Spanish-speaking America more generally;

    Of course, they also said that if Evra's version of events was true then that WOULD be racially offensive. It is important to note that. But it wasn't their job to decide who was telling the truth, just to report on each witnesses statements.

    So again, there is no evidence. Suarez did not admit to racially abusing Evra like you and and many others have stated; he admitted to usng the phrase "Por qué, negro?", which the FA's own language experts concluded was not racially offensive.

    I apologise if I've hijacked your initial post and gone off on a tangent but I feel so strongly about this. Obviously I'm a Liverpool fan and so I'm extremely compromised with regards to my impartiality around this case, but it's the first big FA disciplinary shindig I've had a vested interest in and I've been appalled by the process. I'd like to think that I would be equally appalled if this was a case between an Aston Vanilla player and a Wolves player, but to be honest I wouldn't give a fuck.

    I'll say it again - in a case such as this, where people's reputations are going to be smashed to bits and tarnished forever, the threshold of evidence MUST be higher than 'the balance of probability'. It is essentially the tossing of a fucking coin.

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  4. They concluded that had he used the expression in South America it wouldn't have been offensive. But he didn't use it there. He used it in England where, without any doubt, it offended a black man. And as a result, Luis Suarez was rightly punished for using 'racially offensive language'.

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  5. But herein lies the paradox. They didn't find him guilty because of his own evidence. They discounted it. He was not found guilty of using the phrase "Por qué, negro?". He was found guilty of using the word 'negro' seven times, in a variety of phrases. And again, there is absolutely zero evidence to back this up. Not one single scrap of audio or visual evidence exists, and not a single witness could corroborate this version of events. Of course, the same can be said for Suarez's evidence. No evidence exists to back up his version of events either.

    Not even Patrice Evra claimed that Suarez had racially abused him seven times. In the Canal+ interview he claimed 'at least ten times' which is apparently just a figure of speech in France. Damien Comolli verified this, but said that Evra had used the phrase way out of context. Post game Ferguson claimed that Evra had been called 'nigger' five times by Suarez, and five times (oh the irony) is the figure Evra claimed in his evidence to the panel. Again, despite no evidence existing, the panel reached a conclusion of seven times. This is what he was found guilty of.

    You can't discount one persons evidence as being unreliable and basically accuse them of lying, and then use that evidence to convict them anyway.

    I hope you can see that I'm not going down the route of crackpot conspiracy theories, but my stance on this is simply built around the fact that absolutely zero evidence exists to back up either man's claims. It is despicable that a person can have their reputation torn to shreds in such a fashion. This was an allegation of a criminal offence, and had it gone to criminal prosecution as opposed to civil action the case would not even have got to court.

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  6. I have neither the time nor the inclination to revisit the report, but my memory of it is that various viewpoints were corroborated or denied via a process of interviewing key witnesses and watching TV footage (some of it previously unseen) provided by Sky.

    At the time i felt the case was water-tight and that the right decision had been reached. With the exception of some of those closely affiliated to Liverpool FC, a huge majority of those covering and commenting on the case felt the same way.

    If LFC, Kenny Dalglish and Luis Suarez think that they have been treated unfairly or that there is evidence which has not come to light (which they have intimated on numerous occasions) it's their duty to lodge an appeal and make their grievances known so as to put a stop to accusations of bias or impropriety.

    As it is, it's churlish in the extreme for you to now be arguing that the process was unfair or prejudiced. Luis Suarez was found, on the balance of probability, to have committed an act of using racially abusive language which the player himself has admitted using.

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  7. Sorry to drag this up again but I've been meaning to reply to you this past week but had little chance - a five week old daughter does somewhat encroach onto your available time. I can see that there is little point debating the merits of the FA's written report - we're looking at it from two completely different perspectives and are obviously never going to agree. On the subject of appeal, it is worth remembering that the verdict itself could not be appealed against, only the severity of the sentence.

    We will agree however on the absolutely abject way in which LFC have handled the situation, from a legal point of view and especially from a PR point of view. They have utterly failed to communicate as to why they have such a grievance against the process, and by backing their player have allowed certain sections of the media to basically paint the club as a racist institution condoning racism. Badly thought out statements on the official website simply did not suffice, and although there was little point appealing the club should have been calling press conferences and releasing detailed documents explaining why they refuted the findings of the panel. We should of been highlighting how the FA's disciplinary process simply HAS to be flawed, what with their successful conviction rate of 471 out of 473 cases (or 99.5%) for the year 2011. Debating this subject with others it is apparent just how badly Liverpool did in this regards - nobody really understands LFC's position, and some of the things I've heard people say about this case and what they think Suarez has admitted saying are so ill-informed its actually scary. There does appear to be a dearth of reasoned debate surrounding the subject, and that is because LFC have completely failed to generate any. As a result we get the likes of Jason fucking Roberts, Clark Carlisle and Piara Powar spouting their vacuous cliche ridden soundbites, whereas the articulate, intelligent and experienced John Barnes finds his voice marginalised and pushed into the background.

    I wanted to go off on one about the press coverage of this case, and how even though Liverpool were partly culpable because of their risible PR department (if it exists) the majority of the coverage has been absolutely disgusting. I do sense however that you may be becoming bored of me spamming your blog, so I'll leave it in my head, rattling around and causing me to conjure up mental images of me stabbing Ollie Holt, Martin Samuel, Mick Dennis et al in the head with a screwdriver.

    Good day.

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  8. I think you're right that there has been some appalling media coverage - aided and abetted by LFC's own awful and misguided attempts at managing the situation. But it's not all been bad - outside of the Sunday Supplement dipshits (not least Paddy fucking Barclay and his awful Tweets) there has been lots of reasonable and reasoned debate.

    I have to agree with you about John Barnes too - he's been a regular contributor to Five Live and his view that racism has not been abolished but merely remains hidden is one of the most honest, articulate and brave views to have been aired during this whole furore.

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