Profile: Steven Gerrard | Newcastle 1 Liverpool 5: Gerrard's class proves telling | Planning a safe night out

What sort of effect will this incident have on Steven Gerrard?

You can never tell. He is due in court in three weeks' time and potentially the case could hang over him far longer if it is adjourned. But players react to these situations in very different ways. For example with the Lee Bowyer/Jonathan Woodgate case, Bowyer thrived on the adversity, producing the best form of his career, whilst Woodgate found the situation very hard to deal with and it effectively put his career on hold. That was a different situation, though. I would not like to draw too many parallels.

Would you say Gerrard has the resilience to overcome this?

Yes, he is a very strong person, although he is more introspective that many people would imagine, more private and quiet, but he has the mental toughness to overcome this. Gerrard has behaved impeccably for over ten years so I was surprised to see his name associated with this type of incident. It is important to stress that he has not been found guilty of anything – innocent until proven guilty. All I will say is that he is not renowned within the game as a troublemaker or a hell-raiser.

Will it have a knock-on effect on Liverpool's title challenge?

There's no reason to suggest that could happen and I would it is something that is troubling Rafa Benitez too much at the moment. Obviously if Gerrard was missing for a significant portion of the season, that could be a different matter, but for now it is just another footballer facing a charge of some kind..

Is it perhaps a storm in a tea-cup?

It's not a pleasant headline but footballers have been involved in countless accusations of assaults and suchlike in the past which have ultimately come to nothing so it would be wrong to speculate here, without wishing to downplay what could be a very serious incident. But he's not been proved to have done anything wrong so any asssessment would be purely hypothetical.

The alleged incident is said to have stemmed from a dispute over a musical request made to the DJ. What sort of music does he like?

Actually, surprisingly for a footballer, he has a decent taste in music - from dance to indie - and songs that have a particular resonance in Liverpool such as Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire.

Do you think the huge publicity this story has received suggests we have little faith in the behaviour of footballers?

I do. Although the fact that a salacious story involving a footballer is already the most read on The Times website and for a time led the BBC news when there are more serious things happening in Gaza and with the economy suggests that the reaction has been slightly hysterical.