PHOTO: Who is going to winInseparable, irreplaceable, irresistible: Suarez & Evra ready to add Champions League

There were the words, spoken just after the hour mark in a 1-1 draw at Anfield in October 2011, but whose significance initially escaped virtually everyone present. Then came the controversy, the charge and the conviction. There was the eight-match ban for Suarez, when he was ruled guilty of racially abusing Evra
There were the denials, the ever more polarised arguments, pitting Liverpool and Uruguayans against the majority. There were the multitudes who pronounced themselves experts in racism and South American interpretations of Spanish phrases.

There were the T-shirts, the handshake that wasn’t and the three apologies, dictated from Boston that appeared on Liverpool’s website. There was the 115-page FA report. And at the end of it, views became ever more entrenched. Suarez was a wronged hero to some, a villain to more. Evra was still more unpopular at Anfield than, as a Manchester United player, he had been before.