Stuart Pearce needs to clear the air after allegations of racist abuse towards Paul Ince emerge In a week when Kenny Dalglish offered the bizarre suggestion that Luis Suárez "shouldn't have been out [banned] in the first place" - and Rio Ferdinand was booed at Chelsea simply for being Anton's brother - the FA stood firm against Capello over the armband and then handed the manager's tracksuit for one game to a coach of whom Gordon Taylor said after the incident in 1994: "Stuart regrets what he said. It was said in the heat of the moment. He wants to make sure everybody knows he is sorry and hopefully that will be the end of the matter. I am sure Paul will accept the apology in the manner in which it is intended. Of course nobody repeated these echoes when Pearce was appointed to manage the GB Olympic team because there was no context to lend them fresh weight. But for the FA, in the midst of the Terry saga, each road leads agonisingly back to the season's central narrative, which extends to an apparent monkey impersonation in the crowd at Liverpool, an eight-match ban for Suárez and police arrests for racist chanting on trains. So should Pearce have been overlooked on the basis of something he allegedly said 18 years ago and then apologised for? Ince was an England colleague, of course, just as the allegation against Terry is that he racially abused the brother (Anton) of another serving England international. The FA have either failed to spot the significance of these details in Pearce's life story or were determined to promote him anyway on the basis of continuity and forgiveness (for 1994). So they are either brave and loyal to the only English coach in the senior set-up or simply missed the paradox that comes with Pearce's elevation. He was lucky, you could say, the alleged offence took place 18 seasons ago and not now, as Suárez or Terry (who denies the charges) would tell him. It would be hard to imagine an eight-game ban or a trial at Westminster Magistrates" Court back in the 1990s. Pearce has rejected his brother's political views in interviews and will doubtless be asked to again in the run-up to the Holland game, for which the FA might have been wiser to appoint Gareth Southgate (for footballing rather than political reasons). The real appointee - Redknapp, almost certainly - still faces huge fall-out from the Terry episode and trial-adjournment; principally, the question of whether to take him to Poland at all, especially if Rio Ferdinand is fit and on form. Redknapp, remember, may be inclined towards Ferdinand from their shared West Ham days. His age will certainly not be held against him. So none of this is going to go away just because Capello objected to being told what to do after making a mess of the captaincy issue. With the booing of victims of racial abuse (real or alleged) and their siblings, with the racist chanting from the stands and on trains - and with the vile Twitter abuse aimed at black footballers - a fresh war has started up against bigotry and xenophobia. I choose that word carefully. This is not a skirmish but a re-emerging curse in the national game. Pearce may feel aggrieved to have been caught up in it, but context and circumstances require him to face the media questions (once) and declare membership of the correct camp in this escalating struggle. Arry Redknapp is nobody's fool We need to talk about the H. The one in Harry, which gets dropped when Henry James Redknapp enters the room. Within seconds everyone is calling him "Arry. Consider the Thursday morning headlines encapsulating Redknapp's acquittal and Fabio Capello's resignation: Arry Vederci. Henry James was not a miss-print. It is how Redknapp was charged at Southwark Crown Court: an event that already seems eras ago. Henry Redknapp" would stop us in the media diving into Mary Poppins mode each time the probable new England manager is mentioned. Harold. Harold Redknapp? No, too Steptoe and Son. See? It's happening again. By an unusually strong force of stereotyping Redknapp is condemned to occupy the caricature of a bloke from the East End who sends words out to dance. He played up to this during the trial, portraying himself as a Luddite who never sends texts. He can send a text, all right. Away from lawyers and judges he detests the ducker-and-diver label, as he showed when ripping off his microphone and stomping out when a TV interviewer referred to him as "a wheeler-dealer." This is a complex, multi-dimensional man, caught up in the dichotomy between old "football men" and modern technocrats. He is both a Henry and an "Arry. No more captaincy drivel, please The Football Association handled the John Terry captaincy decision admirably but there remains a tendency to slip into armband-sentimentality. At Thursday's media inquest, David Bernstein, the FA chairman, told us: "There is something particular about an England football captain and actually, I believe, rather different to the captains we see on the continent. The statue outside - Bobby Moore. You could hardly say more than that, because the history of Billy Wright, Bobby Moore, and so on, is the stature people look for in an England captain. Enough. The statue commemorates Moore, certainly, but more so the 1966 World Cup win. Achievement, not social status.