PROFESSIONAL Footballers’ Association boss Gordon Taylor has apologised for appearing to compare the the case of convicted rapist Ched Evans to the Hillsborough disaster.

Mr Taylor, a former Blackburn Rovers winger who lives in the Ribble Valley, had been criticised for comments made in a radio interview on Thursday.

Yesterday, the 70-year-old reiterated his support for the families of the 96 Liverpool fans who died and said he was ‘in no way’ making a comparison between the two situations.

Evans’ recent attempt to join Oldham Athletic, collapsed earlier this week amid threats to the club’s staff and their families.

The 26-year-old Welshman had hoped to return to the professional game after his lawyers lodged an appeal of his conviction with the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

In his initial interview, Mr Taylor said: “He would not be the first person or persons to have been found guilty and maintained their innocence and then been proved right.

“If we are talking about things in football, we know what happened, what was alleged to have happened at Hillsborough. And it’s now unravelling and we are finding it was very different to how it was portrayed at the time - indeed by the police at the time.”

Among those who criticised the comment was Professor Phil Scraton, the primary author of the Hillsborough independent panel report, who said Taylor’s had been ‘insensitive’ and ‘inappropriate’.

Steve Rotheram, Labour MP for Liverpool Walton, said: “It’s totally unnecessary and it’s very insensitive bringing Hillsborough up with the conviction of a rapist and whether a rapist should be allowed to play football or not.

“I can’t understand (Taylor’s) logic. I can’t get my head round how an intelligent man uses issues that are so unrelated to make his point.”

In a subsequent interview, Mr Taylor said: “The last thing I intended to do was to upset anybody connected to the Hillsborough case. I’ve long been a supporter of them (the Hillsborough families) so if that’s the impression they got, it’s a totally wrong one and I’m very sorry for that.”

In a separate interview, he added: “It was the principle with regard to establishing the truth and his right to do that. Now as it has turned out...obviously I don’t want to offend anybody at the Hillsborough Family Support Group, we’ve always been supportive of them. The last thing I wanted to do was to offend any of them, it was quite the opposite.”