It seems that £40million is the price required to prise Luis Suarez from Liverpool's grasp. But is the Uruguayan striker worth that hefty wedge? Two JOEs debate the topic...
Adrian Collins says...Is Luis Suarez worth £40 million? That all depends on whether you want your team to score goals or not, I suppose.
Obviously, that's something that all teams want (except maybe Stoke) so at £40 million, you're guaranteeing that he'll get you at least 20 goals in a season, and that's if you're not counting all the goals he creates with his movement. Of course, he scored more than that this season, but taking into account adapting to a new team and no longer being the sole focus of the attack would probably have a slightly negative impact on those numbers. Hopefully not as negative as it had on Fernando Torres though.
Countering that point though, is the fact the he normally occupies at least two defenders, freeing space in behind the defence for other players to take advantage of. If you already have top quality players up front and in the midfield who need that type of coverage already, then all you're doing is stretching your opponent's defence even further and creating more space for Suarez to fill his boots.
He does have a pretty poor shots to goal ratio, but only because he ends up shooting after he's done most of the work a lot of the time for both Uruguay and Liverpool. He takes the ball down and attacks defenders, which is a pretty tiring way to play the game (not to mention all his closing down from the front) so when he gets in position to shoot, he's often expended a lot of energy already, and is running out of steam. If he has other players around him to create that space and who are capable of making chances for him to simply tuck away inside the area, then that statistic should improve, making him an even more important player for the team.
An example of that has been how he's working hard on his free kicks, and has been slotting them home with a bit more regularity than he used to. He scored a fantastic one against Spain, and was giving goalkeepers plenty of grief towards the end of last season with his efforts. For all the bad press he has gotten, that is certainly one area of game that he has dedicated time to on the training pitch, which again shows the value of a player who knows his own weaknesses and is dedicated to improving them.
That is perhaps why he can often be seen giving out to his other team-mates, and this is mainly because he expects those standards from others. Were he to move to Real Madrid or to another Premier League team in the Champions League places, he would have that understanding with players of a high standard. We saw when Sturridge arrived, a striker with great movement, that the two clicked almost instantly, and he is one of the few players Suarez rarely gives out to.
Discipline is an issue, but in general, he rarely gets booked or sent off, and his bans have been for extraordinary circumstances that (I hope) he has learned a lesson from.
All in all, from a business stand point (which is ultimately what this decision will be based on) Liverpool are selling their best player, one of their most marketable assets, and a man who is at the absolute peak of his game. Given what transfer fees have become over the past few years and the talk of Tottenham looking for £80 million for Gareth Bale, is Luis Suarez worth at least half of that?
Absolutely. It makes no sense to even listen to offers that are below that valuation, in particular if they come from teams Liverpool are in competition with in the Premier League next season.
Sean Nolan says... While Luis Suarez has many, many good points, it is hard to justify such a big price tag for the striker, all things considered.
There is no doubt that the future of Liverpool striker Luis Suarez is the transfer story of the summer, at least in this part of the world. His current club continues to say that the striker is not for sale but every utterance from the player, including his latest quotes last night, suggest that he quite fancies a move away.
If reports are to be believed it will take a fee north of £40m for Liverpool to allow Suarez to talk to suitors but that is a heck of a lot of money for a player who, let’s face it, has his issues.
His goals tally last year for Liverpool was very good, 29 from 44 games, but he hold and could have had much more. Of 143 chances he had last season, only half, 72, were on target. That’s very poor and over the last two seasons Suarez has only converted 13 per cent of his chances into goals. Pure and simply, he is not a clinical finisher.
That he still manages to get so many goal is a testament to his work rate and gambling skills but a clinical finisher he ain’t.
A really clinical finisher, like Radamael Falcao, went for a reported £53m this summer. As you might expect, Monaco paid over the odds, so desperate were they to get him so if we say that Falcao would be properly valued at around £45m, then surely Suarez can’t be just a measly £5m cheaper.
And while we are at it, Neymar, who is potentially the next global superstar of football, went for £48m.
If all we had to base the pricing on was football, you might be able to make a case for the 26-year-old being worth £40m but Suarez has other issues that have to be considered. The racist incident with Patrice Evra was shameful and brought a lot of abuse down on a great club. His non handshake afterwards only made it worse and indicated that he hadn't learned much from the row.
We would say the biting incident with Branislav Ivanovic was a crazy one off but he had done it before, in his Ajax days. The injury caused to the Chelsea player was minor but the punishment for those type of actions had to be, and was severe. He cost Ajax a lot of playing time and at Liverpool he has been hit with 18 games worth of bans for two serious incidents.
That streak in Suarez has to be a factor. Playing on the edge might make him the player he is but it also means that clubs have to factor that in if they wish to buy him. The player himself said that no concrete bids had been put, with Arsenal rumoured to have lodged one for just £30m.
To me that sounds about right for a player who might be good for 20 goals in the league but who will bring his fair share of headaches too.
There is an awful lot of money sloshing around football, with clubs like Swansea and Southampton splashing huge cash on strikers. Arsenal. Chelsea and even man City are in the market for a striker so a bidding war may develop that means Liverpool do manage to hit that magic £40m number for their prized asset.
They might get it, but that doesn’t mean he is worth it...
