Luis Suarez transfer will now cost Arsenal £50m-plus after he loses Liverpool contract wrangle
Luis Suarez transfer will now cost Arsenal £50m-plus after he loses Liverpool contract wrangle
Striker now accepts key clause in his deal does not mean Kop club MUST sell him if they receive an offer of over £40million
Clause for concern: Suarez won't ask the Premier League to rule on his contract
Getty
Arsenal will have to pay £55million if they still want Luis Suarez,
after the striker dropped his pursuit of arbitration as a means of
leaving for less. The Gunners'
boss Arsene Wenger had indicated he was ready to dig in and wait to see
the outcome of a contract dispute between the striker and Liverpool,
after submitting a bid of £40m plus one pound - which was supposed to trigger a release clause.
Yet,
in fresh talks early this week with his club, Suarez has finally
conceded he will not approach the Premier League to arbitrate - because
the contract clearly states the Anfield giants have no obligation to sell him at ANY price.
And with the 26-year-old
under contract for another three years, manager Brendan Rodgers and the
Reds' board are determined to keep him unless their valuation - thought
to be around the £55m Paris Saint-Germain paid Napoli for Edinson
Cavani, Suarez's Uruguay strike partner, a fortnight ago - is matched.
A
source close to the club’s American owners explained on Tuesday that
lawyers have examined Suarez’s contract in detail, and have concluded
there is no requirement to sell in the event of a bid topping £40m, merely a commitment to inform the player of any such approach.
“We are 100 per cent confident - there is absolutely no obligation to sell and that is very clear,” the source explained.
“We’ve all examined the clause in detail. All it obliges is good faith negotiations about Luis’s future.” Price is right? Liverpool value Suarez in the same bracket as £55m Cavani
psg.fr
Wenger’s problems are compounded by the fact Liverpool are
determined not to sell to one of their direct rivals for the top-four
place they are targeting in the coming season.
And that means
Suarez has only three options if he is to get his desire to go to a club
engaged in the 2013-14 Champions League - a sentiment he reiterated at a
meeting with the club at the start of this week. Option one
would require Wenger to make a bid so massive it would convince
Liverpool to sell - and sources within Anfield suggest that figure would
have to be well beyond £50m for them to even contemplate doing business
with another English club. Option two is for
Suarez to take the drastic action which Carlos Tevez attempted when he
tried to force a move away from Manchester City... but the Argentine’s
‘strike’ plan backfired dramatically and he was left to rot in the
reserves amid widespread global condemnation.
While Suarez has indicated to Arsenal he is prepared to agitate for a move, he has stopped short of submitting a transfer request.
Nor
has he shown any appetite for the extreme course of action he pursued
when he eventually engineered a switch to Ajax from fellow Dutch side
Groningen.
That leaves his final option, and perhaps the only real prospect now of a route out of Anfield - a bid from a foreign club.
While
Liverpool are determined to ensure any English suitors meet their
massive valuation, their preferred option, if Suarez does leave, is to
see him disappear from the Premier League, and they could be persuaded
to reduce the fee for a team from overseas.
Real Madrid are still
the striker's preferred option. And even though the Spanish giants are
currently consumed with their passionate pursuit of Spurs' Gareth Bale,
they have indicated there is some interest in Suarez.
If
they can raise sufficient funds, Real could still bid later in the
transfer window, and Liverpool would be more inclined to allow that deal
to happen - especially if they are given the time to line up a suitable
replacement.
No comments:
Post a Comment