...BUTT NUNEZ IS FINE

YOU may need to sit down when you read this, but I was only sent off twice in my Premier League career. I’ll say it again. Two times.

Both came when I was just a year younger than Darwin Nunez, which tells you a little about what he went through on his Anfield debut. For all his massive fee, he’s still so young at 22, still a kid.

Yet looking back to the red cards I picked up, it’s not the inexperience, because you’re used to the treatment Nunez got from Joachim Andersen from a very young age.

The striker played in Uruguay, Spain and Portugal before he came to the Premier League. He’ll have been kicked black and blue.

It was more the occasion, the atmosphere. The red card I got for ‘fighting’ with David Unsworth was in the derby at Goodison when we were going for the title.

Win and we would have gone top with four games to go.

He kicked me, I got caught up in the emotion and lashed out, though I didn’t connect, and in truth it didn’t warrant a sending-off by the standards of those days.

I got caught up in it, because the title was on the line.

It was the same for Nunez (headbutting Andersen, above). It was his full debut, at Anfield, after a massive-money move.

He wanted to do well, show the fans, and he’d missed a couple of chances, so the emotion got the better of him.

You learn swiftly. He’ll be hurting to miss the United game, and that will be the swiftest lesson of all. Top players hate being sidelined.

So I’m not too bothered by his red card.

It doesn’t show a ‘weakness’. It’s not that he can be easily wound up. He’ll be fine.