Liverpool Should Sell Luis Suarez Now and Start Building a New Future

With all the gnashing of teeth and wailing that is currently taking place in the red half of Merseyside at the imminent prospect of mercurial striker Luis Suarez departing Anfield, have Liverpool’s supporters stopped for a second to briefly consider the benefits of the Uruguayan being sold to the highest bidder this summer?

Initially, there would have been a mixture of emotions swirling round the heads of all those connected to the club at the prospect of his exit, ranging from anger to disappointment to sadness—and with good reason, too.

Do not forget, Liverpool have already backed the controversial 26-year-old to the hilt on more than one occasion since he first arrived from Ajax for just £22.7 million in January 2011—and with often disastrous and embarrassing consequences to boot.

Whether it be the wearing of T-shirts en masse in support of the attacker after he was found guilty by The Football Association of racially abusing Manchester United defender Patrice Evra in December 2011 or manager Brendan Rodgers publicly supporting his man in light of constant questions being raised about his tendency to “dive” in the penalty area, Liverpool have been there for Suarez.

Even in the aftermath of his more recent 10-game ban for biting Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic the Reds, while obviously giving their star player a public admonishment, were still generally protective of the front man against some of the more over-the-top criticisms that inevitably came his way.

However, even before taking into account the fact that this is a man who has tested the patience of both the Liverpool owners, the Fenway Sports Group (FSG) and their young head coach to the absolute limit with his at times outlandish on-field behaviour and misdemeanours, there are still many other sound reasons for offloading Suarez this summer.

Sure, the Uruguay international may be a forward with an array of skills and technique that few other rivals currently operating on planet football can even hope to match, but FSG and Rodgers now need to move on—and quickly—as if ever the oft-heard phrase “no player is bigger than the club” is relevant, then surely it is in this case.

For one thing, it is counterproductive for both parties to keep a player at a club against his wishes, much as it is in the Reds’ right to do so, with Liverpool having experienced this scenario before to different degrees with the likes of both Xabi Alonso and Javier Mascherano.

In each of those two incidents, the player made it absolutely clear that he no longer wanted to be at the club, although in Alonso’s case in a far more discreet manner, with Liverpool then taking the sensible decision not to dwell on the matter but rather to extract the highest fee for their prize assets.

Already we are seeing a similar strategy being employed by the club’s American owners from across the pond, with Andy Hunter of the Guardian  recently reporting that FSG will seek a fee in excess of the club-record £50 million that they secured from Chelsea for Fernando Torres in January 2011.

Move on then, hard as that may be, and start planning for life AS (After Suarez), which means bringing in sufficient funds from the Uruguayan’s sale in order for Rodgers to be able to rebuild the team.

This is a situation that Liverpool Football Club have been through before, both in 1987 and then again in 2011, when a seemingly irreplaceable marksman decided to quit the Reds for pastures new, leaving a giant hole in the team’s front line that supposedly could never be filled.

And yet, in each of those two previous situations, from the depths of despair came new hope, as the former saw the arrival of John Aldridge, John Barnes, Peter Beardsley and then latterly Ray Houghton, too, all in place of the Juventus-bound striker Ian Rush, to form the backbone of perhaps Liverpool’s greatest-ever team in 1987-88.

While in the latter, as I am sure everyone now knows, the Reds managed to bring in both front men Andy Carroll and Suarez for the departing Torres, with differing degrees of success.

The point here being that the club—and its fans—were devastated when both Rush and Torres left Anfield, and yet, within a year, each was soon forgotten as new messiahs came along to quickly dampen their memories, which is the part that Rodgers must concentrate on getting right this summer.

Recruit well and wisely in the coming months, though, and Suarez’s impending exit could be viewed in later years as being the catalyst behind a subsequent Reds resurgence.

However, keep an unhappy player against his wishes and Liverpool run the risk of Suarez badly underperforming next season, with the subsequent knock-on effects to both the team’s morale, as well as the player’s value next summer when by that point he would without question need to be sold in any case.

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