Time to blow the whistle
The three-month wait for European football is finally over. After a period of resting, pre-season training and transfers of both players and managers, the Dutch Eeredivisie and the Scottish Premier League resumed last weekend and the German Bundesliga resumes this weekend with last season’s treble winners Bayern Munich having met Borussia Monchengladbach in the opening fixture last night.
In England, the Football League also started last week with around 150 goals scored across the three divisions and Wembley Stadium hosts the Community Shield to raise the curtain for the new Premier League season which kicks off next Saturday at Anfield when Brendan Rodgers’ Liverpool host Stoke City in the day’s early kick-off. The Capital One Cup is also already underway and the draw for the second round took place on Thursday.
It is not often that the Community Shield has much riding on it but tomorrow’s match will put significant pressure on new Manchester United manager David Moyes. He has never won a trophy in his 15-year career as a manager and he takes a team that is used to win trophies against a Wigan Athletic side that was relegated at the end of last season. It should be a personal mission of his to win tomorrow whatever it takes.
Meanwhile, I have been engaged in a series of debates with Arsenal fans on the boring and irritating saga involving Luis Suarez and, understandably, there has been very little agreement on what is the right way to deal with this matter. Most Gunners feel that if a player expresses his desire to leave, and to a particular club, then the owning club has simply to grant his wishes because there is no point in holding on to a player against his will.
For a team that has been selling its best players to rival sides and aiding them in winning the Premier League, this thinking is very easy to understand but the reality is that this is not the only view. Defender Gabriel Heinze took Manchester United to the Premier League arbitration panel in 2007 for refusing to sell him to Liverpool but that yielded nothing because Sir Alex Ferguson flatly refused to sell to the Reds.
A few years later, Tottenham Hotspur put their foot down in denying Luka Modric a move to Chelsea at any price because to them that would show a lack of ambition. They were aiming to be where the Blues were and it did not make sense to sell one of their most prized assets to a team they are trying to displace. This is the thinking that is now reigning at Liverpool and it has the full support of most fans.
Of course, there are those who feel the player has caused enough problems and we are better off without him. I agree with this and I strongly believe that despite all the goals he scored for us, we played better as a team without him than we did with him as everything was being crafted around him. I also believe that he has done a lot of damage to the Liverpool brand and it would be a huge relief to see the back of the striker.
The best case scenario for Liverpool, therefore, would be for Suarez to leave for a foreign club. Selling to Arsenal simply does not make sense because the intention is to try to get back into European football and selling your best player to one of the teams you are trying to displace is most unwise especially where you have a strong bargaining position.
