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Chris Jack Says Liverpool Tried To “Rehabilitate” Flanagan. It Is Not Even Remotely True.

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Over the last 24 hours I’ve read some thoroughly disturbing stuff about Sevco’s decision to sign Jon Flanagan, the ex-Liverpool defender who beat up his girlfriend on a public street by decking her and then kicking her as she lay on the ground.

The narrative that he “deserves another chance” focuses on his remorse and his “rehabilitation.”

I get the remorse.

But the “rehabilitation” is a bunch of bollocks and it should be decried as such.

Where’s the rehabilitation here?

This was a mere six months ago. Someone told me he’s been to counselling; you need counselling now to know that beating a woman isn’t on?

That threatening a man who told you to leave it out was not acceptable?

All these weasel words, all this stuff designed to paint Flanagan as some kind of victim of his own actions; this has cost him exactly nothing. He’s in a profession that’s essentially a morality free zone. Football allows all the dregs back in.

Dressing rooms all over the country are filled with testosterone fuelled young men who think the world is their personal playpen, but really. Jack’s argument that someone would have signed him eventually, so why shouldn’t Sevco, is the same one used by those at Clyde who sanctioned the deal for David Goodwillie.

And it reeks.

It stinks to the highest of high heavens. Football clubs that are run morally, football clubs which care about this kind of thing, don’t bring these kind of people in. They have higher standards than that. They care about the social consequences.

Liverpool is one of those clubs, and this is where Jack is at his most disingenuous.

He claims that Liverpool didn’t sack him but kept him on the books for his rehabilitation. Actually, the minute the story broke they got shot of him at once, shipping him out on loan to Bolton whilst the club handled the matter internally.

Some newspapers have said he simply “dropped out of Klopp’s plans” as if he was ever remotely in them to begin with. The truth is, from the moment of his arrest he was barely near Anfield. The club wanted shot of him from that moment on.

Sevco’s statement said he was “signed from Liverpool” and one newspaper characterised their move as “snatching” the player from that side. Actually he was “snatched” from the dole queue with not one other club interested in his services.

Liverpool waited until his court case was up, and a judge had given him his punishment, and they said no more about it except in internal disciplinary hearings. But the second his loan deal ended, they cut him loose. They didn’t want him near the place.

Jack can make all the excuses for his favourite club that he wants. He can paint this as good business and try to reinvent a guy who’s barely kicked a ball for two years as the answer to Sevco’s defensive prayers as he likes. He can even try to ignore the obvious truth that putting a guy like that in any dressing room risks major splits in the squad.

But what he does not get to do is drag other clubs into his fantasy. He does not get to make claims about them which are not true. Liverpool FC is a mammoth football institution, but it also takes seriously its social responsibilities and they were appalled at what Flanagan did whilst registered in their name. They acted accordingly.

Shame on Jack for trying to pretend that it was otherwise.

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