ANFIELD — Liverpool owner John W Henry is “unequivocal” that Luis Suarez will be a Liverpool player next season, insisting it would be ludicrous to sell him.
Daily Mail
While Arsenal were on Thursday night discussing their next move — although any increase on their £40million plus one pound bid is unlikely to be anywhere near Liverpool’s £50m valuation — Anfield owner Henry made it abundantly clear that doing business with a major Barclays Premier League rival has never been on the agenda.
And he went one step further to stress that even if Barcelona, Real Madrid or Bayern Munich come calling for Suarez, Liverpool will not grant him a move as they would have no time to find an adequate replacement. Some will inevitably question the sense of keeping a deeply unsettled player.
Suarez has been made to train alone after showing a persistently poor attitude and the incendiary interview he gave to two newspapers on Tuesday was the last straw for Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers, who said Suarez had shown the club “total disrespect”.
Henry said: “I think that I’d say Brendan spoke on behalf of the club and said it well so I don’t think there’s anything I’d want to add to it. We are not going to sell Luis. For all the top clubs it’s extremely important to keep good players but especially Liverpool because we’re not in Europe this year and have not been in the Champions League for a while. Obviously, to sell to a rival for those positions would be ludicrous.”
When pressed if there was a certain amount of money at which Liverpool might consider doing business, Henry replied: “No. I think it has been resolved now. We have said ‘no’. We do not have time to find a suitable replacement.
“It is a football reason. It is not finances. That’s why at this point, so late in the window with everyone who’s already moved or isn’t moving, for football reasons we can’t — and especially to Arsenal.’
