• Conservative MP says it would be helpful to hear from clubs
• Culture committee chairman says no decision yet on witnesses

The parliamentary inquiry into racism in sport is considering whether to ask a representative of Liverpool to give evidence about their handling of the Luis Suárez racist abuse charge, with two influential MPs on the committee critical of the club’s response.

Suárez was banned for eight matches for abusing Manchester United’s Patrice Evra, including, a Football Association disciplinary panel decided, making references to the colour of the defender’s skin. Steve Rotheram, the Labour MP for Liverpool Walton, said the affair had contributed to a reopening of the “fraught” issue of racism. “In hindsight I am sure there are things Liverpool did which they will regret,” Rotheram said of the club’s still unqualified backing for Suárez, before and after the decision.

“They took Luis Suárez’s side in the argument straight away, which shows loyalty to their player you could say is admirable. But that continued after the judgment went against them so it made Liverpool look as if they were supporting someone who did say those things.”

Rotheram said the purpose of the inquiry by the culture, media and sport select committee is wider than an examination of the Suárez case, or that of John Terry, the Chelsea and England captain, who has been charged with a racially aggravated public order offence for alleged abuse of the Queen’s Park Rangers defender Anton Ferdinand.

“I put forward the suggestion of an inquiry because of these two incidents. The issue of racism needs to be lanced now,” Rotheram said. “We need to see if we can draw lessons from it, not only for football, but sport in general.”

Damian Collins, the Conservative MP for Folkestone and Hythe, said he thought it would be “helpful and useful” to hear from a representative of Liverpool and Chelsea about the way the clubs respectively handled the racism cases against their players.

“It would be very good to get one of the clubs in and talk about how they deal with these allegations,” Collins said. “It looked like Liverpool were supporting Luis Suárez as if it were any other disciplinary matter, rather than something as serious as racism allegations. I am not saying they do not take it seriously, but it is very important to consider how it looks from the outside. We all thought because of the work done over the years that the problem had largely gone away, but now it seems to have come back, and we need to understand it.”

The committee’s chairman, John Whittingdale, said it will decide which witnesses to call after receiving written submissions from interested parties. He said that only one day is likely to be made available for hearing witnesses in person, and that they will certainly want to hear from the Football Association, Premier League and the anti-racism campaign Kick It Out. Whittingdale said the committee has not yet decided whether it will consider it to be within the short inquiry’s remit to interrogate the handling of specific cases, including those of Suárez and Terry.

LiverpoolChelseaRace issuesDavid Connguardian.co.uk

• ‘We are putting the attacking path ahead of results’
• ‘It is an approach that benefits English football and its culture’

André Villas-Boas has said he will continue to place as much importance on playing attractive football as on getting results even though he knows it will prove more difficult to satisfy Roman Abramovich’s appetite for trophies.

Chelsea’s manager came in for criticism from some quarters after a 3-1 defeat at Manchester United last Sunday, for a perceived naivety in his plan to try to play his way past the champions.

One statistic he used to reject any criticism was the number of shots at goal Chelsea had at Old Trafford – 20 to United’s 12 – and he believes that once his team take their chances, they will reap rewards.

Villas-Boas’s philosophy appears to chime with the desire of Abramovich, the owner, to win with style. The manager said: “The path which I take is more difficult but it is more gratifying – not that you can be so closed-minded [not] to understand that in a club like Chelsea the most important thing is to win trophies.

“We are putting the attacking path ahead of results but we are trying to reach both targets together. That path is more difficult. We didn’t quite see the fluency of the team earlier in the season, but we are getting better now. It is an approach that benefits English football and its culture of the game. I believe the way you win is as important as winning. Of course there are risks but we are here to take risks in life, no?”

Villas-Boas was hurt by the criticism his side received after the highly entertaining match at Old Trafford. “If you get results with a lack of flair everybody criticises them because it is against the culture of good football and it doesn’t play to the fans. When it goes the other way round I can’t understand it.

“I would do the same all season. It can bring trophies as well. You can take many different ways and be extremely successful. I would never criticise anybody who takes the opposite approach.”

He believes Chelsea were the better team at Old Trafford. “It was an entertaining game for the world,” he said. “Pity we didn’t come away with the three points but I think we were superior during the 90 minutes.”

Another disciple of the beautiful game philosophy is Brendan Rodgers, the manager of Swansea City, who play at Stamford Bridge on Saturday. Villas-Boas believes his opposite number deserves even more praise for sticking to his ideals, because he is attempting it with far more limited resources than Chelsea’s.

He said: “It is a path that Brendan has chosen to take as well. It is difficult and it makes it even harder for him. With the results he has been getting he can be pretty happy. Swansea are a team that play fantastic football. When you try to implement a philosophy like Brendan is trying to do, there is a dignity in the path that he chooses.

“It is a difficult path to choose for a team that needs points. He doesn’t leave his philosophy to second place, it is the most important thing. This has immense value to me.

“I don’t want to call Swansea a small club because it is the biggest in their city and has tremendous identification with its supporters – but to do it there is even more prestigious.”

Petr Cech is fit and will play despite suffering an injury in Wednesday’s Carling Cup match against Fulham. Didier Drogba may return after Villas-Boas said the striker remained on the bench against Fulham only for tactical reasons.

ChelseaAndré Villas-BoasSwansea Cityguardian.co.uk

Speed of thought the new mantra for Chelsea’s manager as he looks to inject additional pace into team

Perhaps it is not so surprising that Roman Abramovich demands that his managers find that rare blend of winning and aesthetic football. Considering the match that supposedly turned him on to the game was a 4-3 extravaganza involving Manchester United and Real Madrid in April 2003, with a series of galácticos on display (Ronaldo, Luís Figo and Zinedine Zidane bewitched for the visitors while David Beckham, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Roy Keane delivered for the hosts), is it any wonder the Chelsea owner has lofty expectations? His benchmark was one of the glitziest matches in Champions League memory. There was a Harlem Globetrotters feel to an affair that dripped with so much romance it was almost sickly sweet.

For all of Chelsea’s many successes (and near misses) since Abramovich began his Stamford Bridge project, the feeling persists that he is yet to be satisfied that any of his managers has created the perfect blend of easy on the eye and peasy with the medals.

André Villas-Boas has spoken liberally – but vaguely – of the myriad things he is trying to change to bring about a new Chelsea style. In their Champions League victory over Bayer Leverkusen there was progress. He defines it as “speed of possession”. Coming after Fernando Torres’s public critique of the team’s velocity last week, it is an interesting development. Villas-Boas and his staff have been working hard to add speed of possession, of movement, of thinking, into Chelsea’s gameplan. So why is it important to play quicker? “Because of the nature of British football basically, because it is full of high speed and high emotion,” he says. “Maybe that is what we’re trying to transform.”

But what is striking is the way it is coming about. Chelsea are looking towards a Latin influence to make the difference. The bulk of recruits to arrive in the past year have come from southern Europe and the Americas – the technique of Juan Mata, Oriol Romeu and (if they can ignite it to the full) Torres from Spain, the dashing David Luiz and Ramires from Brazil, the subtlety of Raul Meireles from Portugal, the youthful prospect Ulises Dávila from Mexico.

Compare that to the intake from five summers ago: Michael Ballack, Andriy Shevchenko, Ashley Cole, Wayne Bridge, Khalid Boulahrouz, Mikel John Obi and Salomon Kalou. The blueprint was generally for a muscular six-footer whose football education took place in northern Europe.

Glance around the English participants in the Champions League, and the example of the success stories from Barcelona and the Spanish national team seems to be setting an increasingly potent trend. According to Villas-Boas, the example is not so much about speed of touch but of thought. “Barcelona have redefined the notion of time and space in football,” he says. “What they have done is increase the speed of circulation of the ball by slowing the game down in their minds. In British football the game is too fast in your mind. Decision making collides with the speed and the nature of the British game.”

Can he adjust that at Chelsea? “I can propose it,” he says, mindful of the fact he is searching for a balance between new ideals with the culture of the game in the Premier League. Deep down, he does not think any other club can mimic Barcelona. “The mixture they have together is something out of this world and I don’t think it’s possible at the moment for any other club. It’s Iniesta, Xavi, Messi, Piqué. So many brought up in that school they are able to show their full potential for the first team.”

But looking for that balance between southern and northern football styles is clearly worth pursuing. It may be a trick of the eye – especially when you see Stoke City reinforced by Peter Crouch – but the Premier League seems to have become a magnet for smaller players in a way it has never been before. Where athletic prowess and physical bulk was a basic prerequisite not so long ago, now increasing numbers of dainty, nimble, ball players are running amok.

Manchester City are the most arresting example, with their agile front players weaving free-flow patterns that leave their fans giddy in more ways than one. The way that David Silva, Sergio Agüero, Samir Nasri and Carlos Tevez buzz around the final third makes them look like they would belong as comfortably in La Liga as they do in the Premier