Luis Suarez should be helped over the recent biting incident and not criticised, says his Liverpool team-mate Jamie Carragher. The 26-year-old accepted a violent conduct charge for biting Chelsea's Branislav Ivanovic and is due to find out the length of his ban on Wednesday.

Writing in the Daily Mail, he said: "Rather than hounding him out of the country, shouldn't we be helping him?"

"Luis knows he has done something seriously wrong, letting himself down," he added.

"The way things are now being pitched is that Liverpool have got to do something about the rotten apple in their midst.

"It is as if Luis is the only player to have represented Liverpool who has ever been embroiled in controversy. That simply isn't the case.

"Every one of the players I mention regretted what happened and Luis is the same. More importantly, the club stood by every one of them.

"Now I am not for one moment trying to sugar-coat the incident in which Luis bit Branislav Ivanovic. It was wrong on all levels.

"You simply don't expect to see a grown man bite another grown man - that is behaviour you would associate with nursery school.

"Yet was it worse than a challenge that could end someone's career?

"I know what it is like to have your leg broken by a reckless tackle. Lucas Neill cost me six months of my career in September 2003 when he played for Blackburn.

"Would I have preferred to have been bitten? Absolutely."