Why always Barnsley?

Back in August, at a time when any football supporter should be looking at the top of the table with the phrase “this is our year” running through their mind, I was contemplating roadkill, helplessness and my growing disaffection with football.

Since then, Middlesbrough’s season has progressed with, shall we say, predictability. Several wins, some losses, Manager of the Month, scrappy cup victories over minnows, glorious cup defeats to superiors, no league points between the decorations coming down and the daffodils coming out. There’s no point attaching a year to the story – it’s just the same one all Boro supporters know off by heart.

So it’s slightly curious that the return fixture should be the one to bring me back to my keyboard. It’s the first league game I’ve seen since it became obvious that the New Year’s Day surrender at Derby was the start of a pattern, rather than a blip, and I was interested to see if there was anything glaringly obvious going on.

Turns out, there is. We’re not keeping the ball.

There’s a lot of talk in football about systems, positioning, tucking in, overlapping, matching up, dropping deep, and all the other assorted expertisms that come with people who think that Andy Gray drawing lines on a screen was the single biggest innovation in the game’s history.

I’m sure these things make a difference, at the margins. To use a motorsport analogy, they are the little slots, geometries and winglets that give the last point of downforce that makes the difference between a championship-winning Red Bull and a midfield-plodding Mercedes.

None of those things will be any use to any car, however, if the driver points the thing the wrong way, or the team don’t put enough petrol in the tank. Or, in football, if the players keep giving the ball to their opponents.

Boro started doing this very early in the game. I read an opinion that Barnsley’s first goal, after five minutes, was the fault of left-back George Friend, who left too much space between himself and the scorer O’Brien, so he couldn’t get a decent block in when the shot arrived, and instead deflected it into the net. I assume it was a lack of space that meant the Coriolis effect on the spin of the ball (given the high latitude of the stadium) wasn’t considered.

What actually happened was that Boro gave the ball away. The visitors punted a hopeful high ball towards Rhys Williams, whose performance all afternoon could politely be described as “woeful”. If Williams had been playing up to his “Rolls Rhys” reputation, he would have taken a pace back, chested it down, sidestepped his opponent and played a neat pass down the line. If he had been playing as a basic defender, he would have launched a forceful header 50 yards forwards, or at the very very least put it into touch.

Instead, he stood underneath the ball and wafted a weak header to the nearest Barnsley player. A few passes later and the “killer ball” (quite a good one, by the way) was leaving Friend cursing his geometry and Steele pawing at thin air, like a cat vainly trying to catch a bluebottle.

And this continued throughout the first half. Williams repeated the same trick at least once, and spent the rest of the time heading down blind alleys and making half-hearted passes. Over on the left, Friend followed his captain’s example. Passes from the midfield, none of whom stood out for special mention either good or bad, found opposing fullbacks or the touchline more often than they found a colleague. Up front, Lukas Jutkiewicz gave a perfect demonstration of why having one designated “forward” player very rarely works, at one point having to try to hold the ball while surrounded by five defenders.

The second half brought a brief demonstration of what happens if you make a good, accurate pass. Ledesma, in his own half, swivelled and played a low, fast ball into the path of Carayol. This caused such panic in the away defence that all Muzzy had to do was keep running while the inevitable mix-up played out, then pop the ball into an empty net from six yards.

The second goal was a good deal scrappier, albeit after a half-decent build-up, and then a double substitution put the Tykes (who lived up to their terrier-like nickname all afternoon) back on top. Steele flapped at a Delap-alike Delap throw-in, Dyer backed out of a challenge in the box, and the ball bobbled through to Golbourne who did his best to miss from even closer than Carayol.

Happily, the winner came with a couple of elements of comedy. Hines made the 873rd backpass of the afternoon, and this time Steele slipped while trying to perform his normally-effective drag back. He then did what goalkeepers do naturally, conceding a free kick thanks to yet another of football’s Rules With Unintended Consequences.

It was at this point that the visiting supporters appeared to descend into some kind of collective delusion. To a man, woman and child, they jumped up and began baying for Steele to be sent off. When it became clear that the referee was somewhat better versed in the Laws of Football than they were, their song of “You don’t know what you’re doing” was surely aimed at each other rather than the blameless official.

He even tried to level up the cheating at the free kick. Barnsley widened the angle by taking it a yard or so further in from the goal line, so he let the wall stand about seven yards away. Perhaps if Friend had got even tighter he would have managed to get a better block on it, rather than putting his second deflection over a similarly-helpless Steele.

And that, barring some huff and puff, was that. Only Andre Bikey came out of the game with any credit – for a couple of barnstorming runs when he got sick of the dross around him, for bullying Marlon Harewood out of the game (not something I think I’ve ever seen before), and for the incredible feat of running twenty yards, arms waving, to scream at an official yet avoiding a booking.

(If Bikey wants to learn to be PROPERLY demonstrative, by the way, he needs to watch Barnsley manager David Flitcroft. Every time the ball came near him, he was jumping up and down, running on the spot and flapping about like a demented 118 advert. I don’t know if the bookies have a market on “manager most likely to be sent to the stands”, but he must be a short-priced favourite if they do.)

In the end, all three goals came from allowing the opposition the ball too easily in one way or another. What Boro need to do is to keep it as simple and accurate as possible. Think back to the tiki-taka way they walked round Watford at Vicarage Road (with the help of a dodgy dismissal). Perhaps Tony Mowbray’s habit of tinkering with the team means that they’re not familiar with who will be where, and what they will do. Perhaps playing somebody at right-back who can play at right-back would help. But above all else, the other team cannot score unless they have the ball (or you have Frank Sinclair on your side).

As for me…well, sorry, but I laughed when their third goal went in. The combination of comedic factors outweighed the disappointment at the goal. Like in August, I can’t get too upset about it. Like in August, the ancillary distastefulness of elements of football crowds manifested itself, this time in the form of some middle-aged shaven-headed men squaring up to each other after the game.

And like in August, the roadkill made an appearance. On the last half mile of the most boring drive ever, I hit an already-dead-and-bloodied fox. Perhaps that completes the cycle, and we can start again on Tuesday.

An unusual complaint

First things first. This feels out of my comfort zone. I might have second thoughts later and delete it. Footballers and football, I can do. Formula One – no problem. Gender politics? Not really my thing. Which is to say, it must be a perfect storm of bad stuff to make me break the habit of a lifetime and complain to a newspaper. If you want to read the article that provoked the letter below, it’s here.

Dear Sir

I’d like to open this by saying that I don’t make a habit of complaining to newspapers. In fact, I can’t remember ever doing so, other than on inconsequential sporting facts when I was a kid. Equally, I wouldn’t bother complaining to newspapers that are only in it for the aggro. Such as those based in Kensington, for instance. I mention that in the hope that this won’t get filed with the “another Twitter mob” pile which I am fairly sure will exist in all national media organisations, just next to the Recycle Bin.

Another thing I try not to do is get involved in “my minority is better than yours” arguments. People who are persecuted/oppressed/bullied, for whatever reason, shouldn’t be. I didn’t have much of an opinion on Suzanne Moore’s throwaway line earlier in the week, nor the slanging match it caused.

With all that in mind, I think the best word for Julie Burchill’s piece in today’s Observer is “reprehensible” (although “disgusting” isn’t far off). To be specific, it’s not the language, nor the outrage at her friend’s treatment, nor even really the underlying debate as to whether women’s issues and transgender issues “intersect” to a greater or lesser degree. The damage, to my eyes, is caused by the viciousness of the contempt for a particular group of people, as a direct result of their membership of that group. I don’t need to point out the many historical examples of where that leads.

I’m aware that some people will cry “freedom of speech” when complaints are raised about opinion pieces. But as I understand it, one of the qualifications to freedom of speech is that it shouldn’t really be used to incite hatred, and even if that was not the intention, this piece could quite clearly have that effect.

Finally – and this is probably the weakest part of my complaint – it’s just disappointing to read something like that from the Guardian group. It’s difficult enough to find a sober, inclusive voice in the British media, without this kind of “tabloid plus long words” rant.

On reflection, although that last paragraph may be the weakest part of the complaint, it’s also what prompted me to make it. The fact is, if the piece had been in the Mail, I wouldn’t have bothered. The only thing I can think is that it’s about relative levels of trust. That probably says more about me than it does about the media, but there you go.

Conversion rates

Just a quick post, this one, on something that’s been bugging me for a few weeks.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about Middlesbrough “failing to take their chances”. The impression is that the strike force needs loads of attempts at goal before one fortuitously sneaks under the goalkeeper’s body or something.

This has been reinforced by performances like that at Leeds just before Christmas – one goal from 14 attempts, compared to the home side’s three two from nine – and Cardiff a month or so earlier, where 19 chances failed to produce a single goal, while the Redbirds nicked the points with one goal from six attempts.

Is it true more generally, though? Do Boro’s strikers need a succession of “gilt-edged opportunities” before they finally trouble the scorers?

Before I present the results of a few hours’ data entry, just a couple of warnings. First, these figures ONLY tell you how good the team is at converting the chances it gets. A team could have lost every match this season 11-1 and still be top of this table by scoring with every attempt on goal. That would just mean the defence was REALLY rubbish, and the ball was never getting anywhere near the opponents’ goal.

Second, the accuracy of the figures rests entirely with the people who do the match stats for the BBC website. I’ve worked out that they do not include penalties as “attempts on goal”, as you will see from this page – Nottingham Forest and Hull City managed to score three goals from one attempt on target between them.

Bearing those things in mind, are Middlesbrough particularly bad at taking chances? No. Quite good, actually. Fifth best in the league, to be precise, with 6.42 attempts per goal. Here’s the table:

Is that level of accuracy costing us against promotion rivals? Not really – or at least it’s swings and roundabouts. Of those higher than Middlesbrough in the league, Cardiff need 6.87 attempts per goal on average, and Hull’s performance is really quite poor on 8.30 (16th in the league). Crystal Palace and Leicester, in the two positions below, are the two best chance-takers by miles.

(The more curious among you may wonder where Boro rank in the accuracy of their shooting: what proportion of total attempts are “on target”? 18th on this one, I’m afraid, with 49.13%. Hull and Palace are both around the same mark, though, Cardiff a bit better on 51.39%, and Leicester streets ahead of anyone else on 61.32%.)

Conclusions? 1. It takes until the second week of the Christmas break to have the time to sit looking at football stats for half a day or so. 2. It might be frustrating watching your team fail to score from nearly 20 attempts, but it’s not necessarily indicative of a long-term problem.

Happy New Year!

Alguersuari to drive for Lotus?

When I started this blog it was intended to be for detailed assessment of stories in the news and on my mind, rather than the type of rushed post that everyone seems to do whenever anything happens in the world. That said, I did once train as a journalist (although I never really bothered…), and I do retain the flash of excitement that comes with realising that you might be on to something nobody else knows about.

With that in mind, I had to do a bit of a “double take” at a tweet posted this evening by Formula 1 driver Jaime Alguersuari. Having lost his drive with Toro Rosso at the end of 2011, Alguersuari has been testing tyres for Pirelli this year, with the canny idea that this will put him in the ideal place to jump back in to a race seat for 2013, with a better idea of what to do with his tyres than any of his competitors.

Alongside this work, he has been acting as a race summariser for BBC 5 Live, but hasn’t been seen in this role since the start of October. In advance of the Japanese Grand Prix, 5 Live producer Jason Swales tweeted that Alguersuari was “racing in the World Karting Championships as part of his preparation for 2013“. There seems to my ear to have been an air of confidence about Alguersuari for some time, as if he knew what he was doing even if nobody else did.

His name has been mentioned in connection with just about every available seat, most notably those at Sauber (now filled by Nico Hulkenberg) and Force India (vacated by the same). In the meantime, everyone has been drumming their fingers waiting for the Lotus/Renault/Benetton/Enstone team to confirm this year’s crash magnet Romain Grosjean as Kimi Raikkonen’s team mate for a second season.

Which makes this picture all the more intriguing.

Posted to give fans an insight into his training machinery, it appears to my possibly-over-eager eye to show the man himself lying on a massage table or similar, attended by somebody in a Lotus F1 team sweatshirt or fleece.

Now there are many possible explanations for this. It might not be a Lotus garment, and it could just be the context that’s leading me to see it as one. Jaime’s personal physio may also work for the team, and happen to have picked that top out of the wardrobe this morning. Lotus may provide physiotherapy services to anybody they’ve ever been associated with (Alguersuari himself confirmed he had talks with the team last year).

Or F1′s youngest ever driver might have just, whether by accident or design, whether as race driver or reserve driver, chucked an unexpected spanner into the 2013 driver market.

End of an era?

I think I’m a more sensitive soul than I used to be. Today I saw a couple of things which troubled me more than I might ordinarily have expected.

The first was, at its most basic, roadkill – specifically, an ex-weasel. (Or stoat, one of the two.) I don’t normally get too upset about dead animals on or by the road – if I did, I would never drive anywhere. The problem with this one, without implanting the same detailed mental image that I have on the rest of you, was that it wasn’t quite dead. It wasn’t going anywhere, but large parts of it hadn’t realised yet.

The second was a more human drama. On the M1 near Nottingham, a smallish family car was in the early stages of being destroyed by fire. The front left corner was well alight, and smoke was drifting across the carriageway. What affected me was the sight of the driver, standing two feet from the fire talking on his mobile phone, forlornly looking at the flames willing them to stop, to go away, to not burn his car to a shell.

In both cases my overwhelming feeling was of helplessness. There was nothing I could do for the dying animal or the unfortunate driver. Even if I had a fire extinguisher (and you can be absolutely sure that I will have one within two days, so I’m less likely to end up in the same position), it would have been ten minutes by the time I turned round at the next junction. I can only hope that a vehicle on the right carriageway – perhaps a truck or a bus – stopped to help. And that one on the right carriageway hit the weasel again to minimise the suffering.

I had one more experience of helplessness during the day, one that I’m slightly more used to. There’s not a single thing I can do, from my position fifteen rows back, to affect what happens on the football pitch when Middlesbrough are putting in a sub-par performance. I never used to believe that. Since the age of ten I’ve screamed, sung, cheered and screamed again with all the rest.

Over the last couple of years, though, I’ve become less and less “bothered”. I still enjoy watching football. I enjoy watching a good game, or a controversial one, or even a one-sided one. There’s things to appreciate in all of these: a moment of individual skill, a sustained period of dominance, a sense of outrage from one side or the other.

What I can’t do any more, it seems, is get overly excited about it. With 600m to go of the Olympic 5,000m race last week, my heart rate was up around 100. I was equally – no, more – helpless in terms of affecting the result, but I was excited to know what would happen, and sufficiently “supporting” of one of the participants to be emotionally involved. I get the same feeling in the last 3km of a sprint stage in a cycle race, and in the 30 seconds before the start of a Formula 1 race.

And the thing about today’s football was that it simply didn’t matter, even in football terms. Yes, OK, Boro’s position at the end of the season will be altered by the points they didn’t win today. But Jenson Button’s finishing position is affected by him missing a turn-in point on the fourth lap – it just doesn’t generate excitement beyond a raised eyebrow.

The attitude of the participants doesn’t help, either. Jonathan Woodgate demonstrated his mental ability by appearing to fail to understand the phrase “wait until I say go” three times in 20 seconds as he tried to take a free kick. Emmanuel Ledesma, who shares a nationality, a vague physical appearance and nothing else with Sergio Aguero, had to be lectured in the presence of his captain about his inclination to compete with Tom Daley for artistic merit scores on his way from vertical to horizontal. And Nicky Bailey, who in his old age will be the dead spit of Buster Merryfield, managed to apparently break every bone in both his legs yet be running after the ball ten seconds later when he realised the referee was ignoring him.

(As a side issue, it’s been notable for a while that Boro’s medical staff should be employed as referees. If Bailey or Joe Bennett ever acquire a genuine injury, they’ll have to wait for the St John’s Ambulance chaps, because the physio doesn’t even bother picking his bag up if they go down and start rolling around.)

The whole point of this post, as you’ve probably worked out, is to rationalise why I felt so alienated, so out of place, in a crowd of bug-eyed, frothing, alcohol-soaked football supporters this afternoon. It’s an environment I’ve known inside out for 26 years – and yet it’s one that I simply wanted to get away from as quickly as I could. I think it’s the first time I’ve headed for the exits early since I had to leave Oxford’s Manor Ground in 1992 to catch a bus.

It’s left me wondering if I should bother going to football. I enjoy going to F1, listening to cricket, writing, working (well, some of the time), travelling, learning. I go to football because it’s something I’ve always done. I had planned to go to Gillingham next week, because it’s a ground I’ve never been to before. But what if I don’t have to go with Boro? What if I can go any time I like, because I’m not tied to one club whose games I don’t really enjoy three-quarters of the time?

In the end, I suspect my point above about Jenson Button will be relevant. There’s no excitement in him a locking a wheel on lap four, but that doesn’t lessen the excitement of the battle for the lead in the last three laps, any more than Barnsley’s win today will lessen my interest if Boro are playing for promotion or relegation in April next year. What might change is the amount of the intervening season I engage with.

People often cite a brush with their own mortality as having given them a sense of perspective, so it seems a touch (OK, massively) pretentious to give the credit for mine to a suffering rodent. In fact, it’s something that’s been coming for a couple of years, and won’t be complete for a while yet. I’m already committed to a home game next week, for a start. But don’t expect me to get too excited.

Taxing the Carr

“Good grief!” said the blog reader. “A post from Quizzical Eyebrow! I thought he was after the record for the World’s Most Dormant Blog.”

OK, “nearly six months” is a long time. But I’m sure all of the people who showed up to read about a couple of footballers are still around somewhere¸ now I’m confused about tax avoidance.

Ever since I’ve been interested in these things (which admittedly was a lot earlier in life than most normal humans), the mantra has been “tax avoidance is not the same as tax evasion”. The former, we were told, is a noble pursuit, the duty of every citizen, involving the minimization of tax liability using every loophole available. The latter is an altogether more disgraceful affair, not bothering with the niceties of loopholes and going straight to the minimization.

Wikipedia tells us that the USA defines evasion as knowingly and intentionally doing something to avoid paying an unpaid tax liability. The logical conclusion from this is surely that if one is not guilty of evasion, then there was no liability in the first place.

This means, to my mind, that there is no such thing as “avoidance”. It can be compared to, let’s say, approaching a roundabout and jumping the queue in the “left turn” lane by taking the empty “right turn” one and going all the way round, 270 degrees, to end up where you would have been if you’d turned left. It’s against the spirit of the long queue in the “left turn” lane, but it’s not illegal and will attract no penalty, other than perhaps a grumble for those who stayed in the queue.

The financial journalist Paul Lewis has coined the word “evoidance”, which he defines variously as

meaning to pay less tax than everyone thinks you really should whether legal, not, or maybe.

and

designing a structure or taking action which has no purpose except tax cutting.

I think his underlying point is that perhaps some of the things that the industry calls “avoidance” might in fact be “evasion” that a court hasn’t ruled on yet.

In the last 18 months or so, tax “dodging” by wealthy companies and individuals has been higher up the national agenda, hoofed there by direct action from UK Uncut and a feeling that the phrase “we’re all in this together” was more spin than policy. And this week, comedian Jimmy Carr was revealed as the biggest client of a scheme designed to shelter millions of pounds annually from the clutches of HM Revenue & Customs.

The instinctive reaction to this is to roll one’s eyes and criticise Carr as yet another example of a rich bloke taking the mickey out of the rest of us, and out of his country. This is a similar attitude to that displayed towards sportsmen and musicians who move to Monte Carlo or Montreux. The sportsmen at least have the excuse of claiming it’s for the training climate.

And the Prime Minister understands this instinct. He described schemes such as the “K2” scheme used by Carr’s accountants as “morally wrong”, and that phrase is leading the reports. But in the next sentence he goes on to hint at some possible double standards, by saying that individual tax planning such as pension contributions is fine. Which got me on to thinking about ISAs.

Because what is an ISA other than a legal device to shield money from tax that would otherwise be due? OK, it is money that has probably already been taxed as income, and the further tax avoided is only on the interest, but the fact remains that HM Government have drafted a law to allow people who would otherwise be taxpayers to “avoid” a bit of their liability – or, put another way, to remove the liability.

All of the articles on the K2 scheme include quotes from HMRC to the effect that they do not believe it will succeed in sheltering the money from the tax liability, and that they are planning to challenge it, as they are presently doing with other similar schemes (including the one that has been at least 50% of Rangers FC’s current problems). I assume that for HMRC to launch a challenge, they must at least have a reasonable expectation that a court might find in their favour – meaning that the scheme was illegal, and all the noise about “aggressive but legal” over the last couple of days was, at best, uninformed.

Indeed, on 23rd August last year, HMRC issued a “Spotlights” guidance note which specifically states:

Arrangements may involve payments passing through a series of companies, loans from a third party or an offshore alleged employer, a deed of covenant, secondments from one employer company to another or claims of self employment, etc. In HMRC’s opinion these arrangements do not succeed in avoiding the tax and NICs due. HMRC will challenge these arrangements and litigate where necessary to recover unpaid tax and NICs.

To litigate means to take a claim to a court of law, which would be an odd course of action for a scheme that is apparently accepted to be “aggressive but legal”.

Is Jimmy Carr “morally wrong”? Well, that depends on your morality. If you have an ISA, or pay a plumber cash, then I would suggest that it’s very difficult for you to argue with Carr’s scheme if it is ultimately found to be legal. The many good arguments about funding public services should, in that case, surely be directed against the laws that allow such scheming, rather than those who benefit from them.

But WILL it ultimately be found to be legal? Given the HMRC statements, I suspect a court may ultimately have more involvement with that question than today’s news reporting would have us believe.

A race to judgement

Late yesterday afternoon the Football Association published the full report of its Independent Regulatory Commission into the racial abuse of Patrice Evra by Luis Suarez in October.

It’s a very long (and sometimes repetitive) document, but in essence it came down to three questions.

1. Did Suarez use abusive and/or insulting words and/or behaviour towards Evra?

The vast bulk of the report is geared to answering this question. There is evidence from the players involved, plus Dirk Kuyt who was closest to the incident; from several Manchester United players as to what Evra told them had been said; from the referee and his team as to what they were told both on the pitch and in the dressing room immediately afterwards; and from Liverpool backroom staff as to what Suarez told them he had said.

The Commission found that while Evra’s statements were consistent with other available evidence, such as the referee’s report, the sequence of events seen on the video, and the fact that several United players independently said that Evra had told them the same thing, the submissions from Suarez were inconsistent and confused, and changed as new evidence was made available to him.

It’s worth noting that all parties – including the lawyers for Suarez and Liverpool – accepted that the case was not simply about “one man’s word against another’s”, because there was enough associated evidence to allow the Commission to decide whether one or other of the points of view was closer to the truth.

The best – and possibly crucial – example of this concerned an exchange between Liverpool’s Director of Football, Damien Comolli, and the refereeing team of Andre Marriner and Phil Dowd. Comolli had become involved as a Spanish speaker (Suarez speaks and understands very little English) when a member of staff had made him and manager Kenny Dalglish aware that Evra and his manager Sir Alex Ferguson had made a complaint to the referee. Comolli actually went to the referee’s room under his own steam immediately after Dalglish was summoned there, to “confirm the version of events told to Mr Marriner by Mr Dalglish”.

The evidence from Marriner and Dowd was that both Dalglish and Comolli had said that Suarez had told them that he had said “[because] you are black” to Evra, although it was unclear in what context. This came across identically in the English (from Dalglish) and the Spanish (from Comolli), but importantly Dowd asked Comolli to spell out the Spanish “tues negro” for the report.

Comolli later denied spelling out “tues”, and said that he had only done so with the word “negro”, but the Commission decided that it was unlikely that Dowd and Marriner had made this up in a report written within hours of the event.

The reason this was so important was that Suarez’s case was that he had only said “Por que, negro?” (“why, black?”) in response to a statement by Evra, and in a manner that would have been considered friendly in Uruguay. By introducing the “tues” (“you are”), the whole meaning of the phrase changed. The corroborated evidence suggested that what Suarez said translated as “because you are black” rather than “why, black?”

Even allowing for this decision, the Commission did make strenuous efforts to discover whether the phrase “why, black?” could, as Suarez claimed, have been a friendly attempt to calm things down. Two experts in Spanish language and culture in South America were asked to produce reports. They stated that, yes, in some contexts the word “negro” was used as a “matey” term, in the same way we might use “fatty”. But they also reported that some black residents of the area found this unwelcome and, more crucially, if anyone used it in an angry or confrontational way it would be understood to be racially offensive.

It was also noted that Suarez only began using the argument that he used the word “in a conciliatory manner” after he had seen the experts’ report which discussed this as a possibility.

Having weighed all of the evidence, and discussed it together with the balance of probabilities and the motivation of each party, over around 330 paragraphs of text, the Commission found that Suarez did use abusive and/or insulting words and/or behaviour towards Evra. It also rejected a claim from Suarez’s lawyer that it should decide whether Suarez intended the words to be abusive and/or insulting, in the same way that it would not normally judge serious foul play on the intent but on the action.

2. Did the words and/or behaviour include a reference to Evra’s colour?

The FA rules are specific in making reference to ethnic origin, colour or race an aggravating factor when considering the penalty for using abusive and/or insulting language.

In this case, the Commission pointed out that because the abusive word in question was specifically concerned with Evra’s colour, it was pretty clear that this aggravating factor was present – in fact, it was impossible to argue that it was absent.

3. What should the penalty be?

The standard penalty for a player sent off during a match for this offence is two matches, and the FA rule states that the “entry point” where there is an aggravating factor of colour should be double the normal penalty. (It also goes on to state that for a second similar offence it should be at least treble the normal penalty, and for any further offences a permanent ban can be considered.)

The Commission listened to submissions from both sides as to the appropriate penalty and decided that, because Suarez used the abusive and/or insulting words seven times, and in three different phases, it was far more serious than the “entry point” of four games which would have applied for just one use. The Commission added:

“Those who are victims of misconduct of this nature should know that, if they complain and their complaint is upheld, the FA will impose an appropriate penalty which reflects the gravity of this type of misconduct.”

There were a couple of other points which are worth noting from the hearing. The first is that, to an extent, Evra started it. The exchanges came about after he complained to Suarez about a foul five minutes earlier. The Commission is quite clear (thanks to the aforementioned Spanish experts) that while Evra’s initial comment translates directly as “your sister’s cunt”, in common use its meaning is closer to “fucking hell”. In any case, Suarez confirmed that he did not hear this, and Evra mentioned it of his own accord.

Second, nobody at any stage claimed or found that Suarez “is a racist”, as opposed to “said racist things”. The finding is essentially that we all do really stupid things that we regret, or fail to appreciate the impact of, but that we should nevertheless be prepared to take the consequences. I suppose an analogy is that someone who causes death by careless driving is not “a murderer” but will still find himself in prison.

The overall impression given by the full 115-page report is of a Commission absolutely determined to do, and be seen to do, the right thing. All of the arguments advanced by “interested parties” in the days after the announcement of the suspension – “it’s OK in Uruguay”, “Evra’s a liar”, “it was one throwaway comment” – are dealt with at length and in detail. The report suggests that by the end of the proceedings Suarez accepted that he was wrong to say what he said, and promised that he wouldn’t do it again.

Where does this forensic approach leave Liverpool FC and its fans? Twenty-four hours after the suspension was announced, the team, including manager Kenny Dalglish, warmed up at Wigan in T-shirts bearing Suarez’s name and picture, in a gesture of “support”. Nobody at the club seems to have considered what a message this sent out. Knowing all the evidence in the case, they still saw fit to act as though one of their players had been imprisoned in a foreign jail for missing the team bus.

And after the event, the club’s official website – not an unpoliceable fans’ forum, the official site – treated us to a full photo gallery of the T-shirt campaign. This has, unsurprisingly, been picked up (by an unrelated retailer) as a marketing opportunity. A football club can’t necessarily be held responsible for the worst excesses of its “supporters”, as widely and horrendously demonstrated across the Internet in the last fortnight, but it should at least make sure that its actions don’t inflame things. A one-line statement saying “Liverpool FC is disappointed with the suspension and is considering whether to appeal” would have maintained the position while not doing anything to foster the rabid outrage mentality. But even the initial statement, let alone the stupid T-shirt stunt, talked of “extraordinary” decisions and encouraged disciplinary retaliation against Evra.

Given the comprehensive reasoning of the Commission, I’d find it astonishing if Liverpool actually launched their appeal. Perhaps they could get a couple of games knocked off – but they could also get a couple added. Middlesbrough have previously demonstrated the folly of launching daft appeals, conincidentally also after a match at Anfield.

So, only one question remains from the whole affair. With its actions in the days immediately following the announcement of the suspension, Liverpool FC appears to have committed a prima facie breach of Rule E3(1), the same rule used to convict Suarez, which states (with my emphasis):

“A Participant shall at all times act in the best interests of the game and shall not act in any manner which is improper or brings the game into disrepute or use any one, or a combination of, violent conduct, serious foul play, threatening, abusive, indecent or insulting words or behaviour.”

At what point will the FA find it appropriate to launch proceedings? Maybe they will wait until after any appeal. However I don’t think the two things are linked, so this coming Tuesday seems like as good a time as any.