by JC_81 » Fri Jul 11, 2014 6:16 pm
Well, the inevitable has happened then in Luis going. Anyone who says good riddance or that they're glad to see the back of them is in denial. Despite the baggage he's one of the most talented players ever to wear the shirt. Genuine world class player and we'll definitely miss him.
It's not the end of the world though. He'll be almost 28 by the time his ban finishes, so you could say that the fee (whether 64 or 75 mil depending on who you believe) is a good one, especially when he cost us 22 mil and we've got 3 excellent seasons out of him. It's inevitable he'll do something daft again in the future so perhaps with hindsight we'll say some day that this was the right thing to do, even if it doesn't feel that way now.
I would also remind people that Luis Suarez was not considered to be in the 'world class' bracket as a player before we signed him. Spurs were our only competition to sign him and even they pulled out of the running leaving us a free run. Signing Andy Carroll the same transfer window was bigger news and the signing of Luis was fairly low key. This is why we shouldn't get hung up on signing a 'marquee player'. It could be that Sterling develops into our main man in coming seasons or someone like Lallana or Markovic kicks on and becomes that player. Nobody, absolutely nobody believed that Suarez would turn out to be better than Torres and look what happened.
Don't cry over Suarez or about missing out on Sanchez... we have a top manager who will improve us in the long term. That's not to say that we didn't slightly over achieve last season or that we won't have a post-Suarez hangover as the team adapts to his loss and integrates new players this coming season. I expect the usual negative muppets to be bawling at letting Suarez go if we have a few bad results early on, but we have to believe in the project and in the collective - it's a team game. We have had great sides before Suarez and we'll have great teams in the future.
One day Suarez, like Torres, Owen and many others before him, will realise how good he had it. We move on.
