There is a time for Liverpool to worry about Luis Suárez and now, with more controversy, fresh allegations of cheating and the justifiable anger of a non-league club swirling round the Uruguay international, is not it. Their problem will have little to do with Suárez's reputation for devilment when it does arise.
The reaction to Suárez's handball in the ultimately decisive goal against Mansfield Town on Sunday is typical of the entrenched positions taken on the Liverpool striker since he received an eight-match ban for using racially abusive language towards Patrice Evra last season. Supporters of Ghana or PSV Eindhoven will, understandably, have taken theirs earlier.
Whether it is the claim that Suárez should have owned up to the referee, Andre Marriner, and had Liverpool's second goal disallowed at Field Mill or, conversely, that he was in fact trying to move his hand out of the way and was embarrassed to have scored; both sides have strayed into the realms of fantasy and hysteria. He committed a blatant foul and got away with it.
With most players, professional or amateur, the matter would end there but Suárez's previous, combined with the fate of a non-league club against opponents of Liverpool's stature in the FA Cup third round, invites an outraged response. Condemnation has followed Suárez's decision to kiss his offending right hand after the goal. The 25-year-old does it after every goal he scores – one for his wife and one on the wrist where the name of his daughter, Delfina, is tattooed.
Even the broadcasters of the game, ESPN, have been dragged into the furore. The American cable network issued a statement on Monday that undermined their own commentary of the tie, provided by Jon Champion who described Suárez's handball as "the work of a cheat".
The statement read: "We take our responsibility to deliver the highest standards of coverage to our viewers. ESPN's editorial policy is for commentators to be unbiased and honest, to call things as they see them. Inevitably this can involve treading a fine line on occasion, especially in the heat of the moment. Comments during the Mansfield v Liverpool match caused offence where none was intended and we have spoken to our commentator about this incident."
Suárez has acted worse on a football field and been rightly condemned as a result, and that is without the need to revisit the Evra affair ahead of their reunion at Old Trafford on Sunday. This season alone he has dived for non-existent penalties and committed dangerous fouls on opposition players. He was also booked for deliberate handball against Southampton last month when he threw out an arm as Steven Gerrard's cross flashed in front of the Kop goal.
Mansfield's fury, and the exaggerated response to Suárez's latest controversy, would never have occurred had Marriner acted as decisively as Michael Oliver at Anfield. Deliberate handball or not, the striker gained a significant advantage against Mansfield and the officials could have disallowed the goal on that basis without recourse to a yellow card.
Liverpool were unhappy with Champion's comment but made no formal complaint to ESPN while Brendan Rodgers has discovered quickly in his debut season as manager that Suárez can dominate a press conference as masterfully as he does a defender. Rodgers' irritation on the subject has surfaced after the handball incidents against Mansfield and Southampton, plus "the vilification" of the striker after a tumble against Stoke City, but otherwise he has turned each Suárez issue into a staunch defence of the striker's character.
Like Kenny Dalglish before him, the Liverpool manager knows he can ill-afford to alienate his best player, one who has carried the attack almost single-handedly during the first half of this season and delivered 19 goals. Keeping Suárez onside and within Liverpool's protection exposed the club to criticism during the controversy with Evra but their support was cited by the striker as a reason to stay at Anfield when he signed a new long-term contract in August.
Suárez's subsequent performances will only have increased the appetite of major European clubs to sign the Uruguay international and it is the lack of Champions League football, not a handball that a referee failed to penalise against Mansfield, that will trouble Liverpool should they fall short again this summer. In the meantime Liverpool have to make progress under Rodgers to convince Suárez that his ambitions can be fulfilled at Anfield – the FA Cup fourth round, through fair means or otherwise, included.
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