Okay here's my take on today just for the record
1- Suarez. I've said all along that I doubt he is a racist per say but he's done himself no favours, to begin with he should have publicly apologised to Evra, whether he believes he was in the wrong or not Evra took whatever was said in an offensive way and that is enough of a reason to apologise. For him then not to shake Evra's hand today and act like he's the one that's been wronged in all of this is genuinely baffling.
2- The handshake itself. It does look like Evra was less keen to shake Suarez's hand than he had been the other Liverpool players but nonetheless his hand was there and it was Suarez the snubbed gesture completely. As for Rio subsequently not shaking Suarez's hand I honestly think that's being blown out of all proportion, if you look at it by the time Suarez gets to Ferdinand Evra is still holding onto his arm and basically the whole thing was starting to descend into chaos so I don't think anything should be read into that.
I've heard Welbeck didn't shake Suarez's hand either, obviously that wasn't shown on TV nor do I know where Welbeck was positioned in the lineup but assuming he was near the back and Suarez had obliged with the niceties with the rest of our team (bar Evra and Ferdinand) then Welbeck would have been best severed to keep his name out of the headlines and shook Suarez's hand if it was there to be shaken.
3- Evra's celebrations. I think it's pretty hard not to concede he was doing it to wind up Liverpool, I don't believe he targeted Suarez specifically though because at no point do you see him look at Suarez, Suarez just appears in the shot behind Evra after a moment or two. If you compare it to what Keown did all those years back when he clearly targeted his celebrations towards RVN then what Evra did today was not even remotely similar. That said it's not surprising certain Liverpool players did react the way they did.
4- KKK post match. For once I though he was quite dignified, he lost his cool with Shreeves eventually but if he genuinely didn't know what Suarez had done pre match then he was probably unprepared for the question. Had he known that Suarez refused to shake Evra's hand he probably would have refused to give Sky an interview like he did with the written media afterwards.
5- Fergie post match. OTT. For one refusing to shake someone's hand shouldn't under any circumstances equal the end of their career. For two it's got nothing to do with us how Liverpool handle their players nor should we concern ourselves with how their players represent them either. Fair enough if Fergie thought Suarez was a disgrace (as do many I would imagine) but leave it there. Fergie's now created a headline that we'll be reading for days and referring to for years.
Only thing left for me to say is what did Robbo do to get banned?
Good post.
