Past actions don’t invalidate the present

It’s wrong to invalidate Liverpool for taking a knee.

Twitter is a toxic place and football Twitter is one of the worst. Amid all the mindless point scoring, whataboutary and agenda paranoia is a place that acts like an eight-year-old kid in a playground.

Giving compliments and acting rationally are out. There’s not cool and they don’t get the likes and retweets that make people feel special.

Which brings us round to some of the reaction to the powerful squad photo that Liverpool took today, of the whole side taking a knee at the Anfield center circle in support of Black Lives Matter.

We’ve seen the United States rocked by protest and police violence over the last few days, and that sort of thing has a wide ranging impact across the world. Several players in the Bundesliga showed their support for those equal rights protestors, and now that’s spread to the Premier League.

Much of the criticism for Liverpool comes in the shape of the way they handled Luis Suarez racially abusing Patrice Evra. The club got that wrong, and while an admission of guilt took far too long to be made, it has finally arrived.

That tells its own story. While some clubs would be happy to sweep the Suarez case under the carpet and hope it goes away, Liverpool brought their handling of it back into the limelight with the apology.

It came too late, but it’s a good stepping stone on the path to having a more enlightened place in the important conversations that society is having.

Taking the knee sends out another message, which can’t be invalidated by the actions of a different team and an event that happened nearly nine years ago.

If people can’t move on, can’t learn from mistakes and can’t try to put them right then what sort of world would we be living in?

Nobody would ever be able to better themselves or to change the world we live in. Trying to score cheap banter points by invalidating an important show of solidarity will only contribute towards the hate.

It fixes nothing.