DURING the dark days of the Gillett/Hicks era, when a succession of PR disasters, broken promises and public in-fighting dragged our proud name through the mud and ultimately the courts, many supporters and commentators yearned for the return of the ‘Liverpool Way’, commonly accepted as shorthand for the decency, humility and dignity with which the club had conducted itself over the previous 50 years.

The arrival of John Henry and his colleagues, the promotion of Ian Ayre and the restoration of Kenny Dalglish have been welcome antidotes to the bitterness, acrimony and divisiveness of that sorry period and much progress has been made in re-establishing Liverpool FC once more as an institution which goes about its business in a calm, considered and rational manner.

The Luis Suarez/Patrice Evra affair has, however, illustrated that there is still a long way to go before we can once again be assured that the traditional values instilled by the likes of John Smith, Peter Robinson and Bill Shankly are fully restored.

Faced with such a serious allegation and the categorical denial by Suarez, it’s understandable that the club initially rushed to the defence of their player and pledged their support in his fight to clear his name.

The subsequent sequence of events described in the report of the independent commission investigating the offence however, implies that the club should have been more circumspect in actively publicising their cunequivocal support.

Inconsistencies in the evidence offered by the club’s witnesses, and indeed substantive changes to original statements in the light of previously unseen video and other evidence inevitably cast doubt on the club’s version of how the conversation between Evra and Suarez progressed. Suarez himself changed his version of events over the course of the investigation, and it’s hard to believe that this was never questioned by the club or its legal advisors.

Aware of their own conduct during proceedings, the club should have known better than to issue the intemperate statement that followed notification of the verdict, expressing incredulity that the verdict could have gone against them and attacking Evra directly, continuing the accusation they made to the commission that he was making his story up in order to pursue a vendetta against Suarez.

In days gone by the proper, considered response would have been the one which greeted the publication of the full verdict over the weekend; that the club would take its time to review the detailed findings and make a statement in due course.

As it was, the club now finds itself in the difficult position of having defended racist behaviour, which anyone who has read the whole report will find hard to repudiate. The admirable propensity of Liverpool fans, and indeed Liverpool people, to defend their own when faced with injustice places an extra responsibility on those who would invoke it: there will be many supporters who, encouraged by the club’s aggressive stance, chanted Suarez’s name incessantly at Wigan and will now be feeling as if their unquestioning support has been abused in this instance.

Others of course will use the whole episode to fuel their paranoia over anti-LFC bias at the FA and hatred of all things Man United.

The club would do well to consider these implications when responding to any future furore; for now the best course of action would be to admit our mistakes, take the punishment and move on, before further damage is done to our reputation.