Please read the article which is extremely good - the title does not do it any justice. Luis Suarez Would be Ideal For Arsenal despite the Excess Baggage - Oliver Kay The Times Earlier this week Liverpool’s supporters voted Luis Suárez in fifth place in the club website’s list of “Players Who Shook The Kop”. That is two places higher than John Barnes and three places higher than Billy Liddell. It is higher than Graeme Souness or Alan Hansen, higher than Emlyn Hughes or Roger Hunt, higher than Ray Clemence or Kevin Keegan. That is the same Luis Suárez, who, at the time of writing, has made 96 appearances for Liverpool and scored 51 goals, picking up a Carling Cup winner’s medal in 2012. Notwithstanding the inevitable tendency for modern online polls to reflect the flavour of the moment, it seems absurd. In terms of contribution to the Merseyside club’s history, he is a pygmy next to the aforementioned giants. But on the other hand, you can see the logic. If “Players Who Shook The Kop” implies an impact that goes beyond on-pitch contribution – and there is no doubt that Suárez’s performance level, in a mediocre team, has been high over the past two-and-a-half years – then the Uruguay forward has few equals. Indeed, it is hard to think of too many players who have shaken the club more, for better or worse. Nobody should get too hung up about Suárez’s diving or that handball goal against Mansfield Town in the FA Cup – or to be more accurate they should be focusing more widely on the culture of gamesmanship that sadly is becoming ingrained in English football, rather than on unpopular individuals who make easy targets. But the racial abuse of Patrice Evra, the biting of Branislav Ivanovic? As Ian Ayre, the Liverpool chief executive said at the height of the Suárez-Evra affair, “the perception of how we are or have been over the past few weeks is not how we want it.” This is not a “brand” issue. It is, as Ayre said a little over 18 months ago, about perceptions. Far too much time and energy at Liverpool in recent times has been spent – and far too much credibility and goodwill lost – defending Suárez, making excuses on his behalf. His talent will inevitably lead to indulgence, but there is a limit to how far that indulgence can be expected to stretch. By all accounts, he is a nice, family-centred guy off the pitch, as well as an extremely talented player on it, but the overall impression he leaves is that of a hurricane. At times he performs like one, a constant whirr of activity and menacing intent as he tears through opposition defencing. At other times Hurricane Suárez has been an ill wind, leaving a trail of destruction. And if by the time the transfer window closes on September 2, he has left the club in a subversive manner befitting his entire Liverpool career, it will be interesting to see how he will be remembered in years to come. Similar could be said of Wayne Rooney at Manchester United. He lies fourth in the club’s all-time goalscoring charts, having scored 197 goals in 402 appearances since his arrival in 2004, and has assembled quite a significant medal collection (five Premier League titles, one European Cup, one Club World Cup, two League Cups). But if he ends up forcing a move to Chelsea this summer – and perhaps even if he does not – his name will not be recalled fondly at Old Trafford in years to come. Of course we live in a different era, when “player power” of various types is sadly well established – and it is worth pointing out that such a revered figure as George Best, with his disappearing acts and multiple retirements, “rocked” United for worse as well as for better. Steven Gerrard might have been lauded as the most loyal of servants at his testimonial match at Anfield on Saturday, but there was a time, in the summer of 2005, when he shocked and infuriated Liverpool’s supporters by requesting a move to Chelsea just five weeks after winning the European Cup. If Gerrard, a Liverpudlian, felt sufficiently restless to submit a transfer request so soon after taking his team to the summit of European football, it is hardly surprising that the horizons of Suárez, a Uruguayan, should stretch beyond Merseyside at a time when the club are unable to offer Europa League football, never mind Champions League. Real Madrid would be an enormous step up. Arsenal would be a far smaller step up, but, in terms of prospects next season, or indeed the previous four, a step up nonetheless. What remains to be seen is how far Suárez is prepared to go in order to make that small but significant step up. Few players have tried harder to talk his way out of a club – or, more accurately, to talk his way to Madrid, which remains his overwhelming preference – but since returning to pre-season training he has, so far at least, managed to knuckle down and play in warm-up matches without succumbing to the mysterious injuries to which unsettled players seem so susceptible as transfer deadlines approach. *** STOP PRESS *** Liverpool’s official website have just announced that Suárez will not travel to Norway for tomorrow’s friendly match with Valerenga due to a foot injury sustained in training today. Cue inevitable cynicism. Media have been told quite insistently that the injury is genuine – just as with the problems afflicting the unsettled Gareth Bale and Rooney of late. *** Liverpool are right to do to everything they can to try to resist selling Suárez, particularly to Arsenal, but their attempts to paint the London club as the villains of the piece are misguided. Yes that £40,000,001 offer might feel like a mickey-take, but it stemmed from their understanding of a clause in Suarez’s contract that requires the Merseyside club to inform him of any offer in excess of £40 million. If, as they have been led to believe, the clause is triggered by a bid in excess of £40 million, how much higher are they expected to go in an effort not to provoke? An extra £100,000? An extra £1 million? Why, realistically, would they do that if they believed they did not have to? Besides, there should be no mystery about how Arsenal found out about that clause. They were privy to the same information as Manchester City, Real Madrid and no doubt half a dozen other leading European clubs. It is hardly a dramatic leap to suggest that Suarez’s representatives were making the existence of that clause – and their interpretation of it – known, along with his ambition to play for a more competitive team who will play Champions League football. There would be nothing shocking about that. That is how football works. It is what happens next, though, that threatens to turn ugly. Suárez and his representatives are understood to believe that a bid in excess of £40 million should trigger his release. Liverpool maintain that it requires them to do nothing more than to inform the player of any bids of that size, which they have done. And so the talk, increasingly, is of a dreaded legal dispute, of arbitration by the Premier League or some other body as Suarez intensifies his search for the exit door. Liverpool maintain that Suárez will not be sold. Good for them. They finished 12 points behind Arsenal last season and, if the Liverpool forward were to change camps, that gulf would seem far more likely to widen than to narrow. A personal view is that, while Arsenal might not be the ideal move for him, he would be the perfect acquisition for them – at least in terms of the impact he makes with the ball at his feet. (With Suárez it is never enough to talk of on-pitch impact.) The question for Arsene Wenger, Ivan Gazidis and everyone else at Arsenal is whether Suárez’s brilliance eclipses his baggage. At Liverpool, arguably, it has not. And given the quality of some of his performances, that is saying something. ©Oliver Kay The Times - News International Group Newspapers
Posted on: Tue, 06 Aug 2013 17:44:21 +0000
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