Suarez Won't Appeal Ten-Match Ban, Releases Apologetic Statement

From the FA:

Liverpool forward Luis Suarez has not appealed the suspension issued to him by an Independent Regulatory Commission this week. A three-person Independent Regulatory Commission upheld The FA's claim that a suspension of three matches was clearly insufficient and the player will now serve a further seven first-team matches in addition to the standard three.

The suspension begins with immediate effect and applies to Liverpool FC's next ten domestic first-team fixtures. This sanction followed an incident with Chelsea's Branislav Ivanovic in Sunday's fixture at Anfield (21 April 2013).The FA intends to publicise the Independent Regulatory Commission's written reasons in due course.

Some sort of finality, even if the Commssion's report--which, unless I'm mistaken, had been due to be released sometime yesterday--has not yet been published. Their reasons and justifications for the ban won't be known until that time, but for now there's at least a conclusion on the Liverpool end of things. They'll be moving forward without Luis Suarez through the rest of the season and into the start of the next one, and from now until then we'll have to stomach the inevitable talk about whether or not his absence at the beginning of next season is due to his ban or a permanent departure.

I think Trev's piece earlier in the day captured the sentiments of most about as well as anyone has, so in lieu of another rehash, I'll just say that I'm glad there won't be any appeal, even if I continue to disagree with the severity and imagined justifications from the Regulatory Commission. Nobody emerges from this looking particularly rosy--except maybe Trev--and it's incident that hopefully falls by the wayside sooner rather than later.

Update: While he won't be appealing, Suarez did release a statement on his Twitter account.