What a signing this would have been.
Back in 2013, Luis Suarez was unsettled at Liverpool and wanted to leave. He was disillusioned, and serving a ban for biting an opposition player.
He wanted Champions League football, which Liverpool couldn’t provide at the time, but Arsenal could.
The Gunners bid £40m and one pound for the Uruguayan striker, which didn’t go down at all well with Liverpool.
John W. Henry, the club’s owner, upon receiving the bid, which was one pound more than Suarez’s release clause, tweeted:
“What do you think they’re smoking over there at Emirates?”
What do you think they're smoking over there at Emirates?
— John W. Henry (@John_W_Henry) July 24, 2013
The deal fell through, Suarez stayed at Anfield for another season, and almost won the league for them.
That might be a bit unfair on the other Liverpool players, who were excellent that season, but Suarez was astounding.
It was arguably the best a footballer has performed during a single season, equal almost to Cristiano Ronaldo in the 2007/08 Premier League season.
Which would make you wonder why the hell Arsenal didn’t increase their bid.
Jamie Carragher has said that the biggest mistake of Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal career was his failure to sign the forward in 2013.
“If you look back at Wenger’s 20 years in English football, there are so many highlights, but that day in July 2013, with the bid that enraged Liverpool, cannot be ignored,” Carragher wrote in 2016.
“Not signing Suarez is the biggest mistake of Wenger’s reign.
“Had Arsenal pushed the boundaries for Suarez, perhaps with an offer of £50m, I believe they would have won the Barclays Premier League in two of the last three seasons. That’s the thing about Suarez: whichever team he plays for, he drags them to a higher level.”
Suarez joined Barcelona a year later. Although Arsenal would sign Alexis Sanchez in 2014, there’s no escaping that they missed out by failing to sign Suarez from Liverpool.
Wenger, who is currently under more pressure than at any time during his Arsenal tenure, has been speaking about how close the club came to signing the striker.
The Frenchman has said they “had an agreement with the player,” but there was a mix-up regarding the buy-out clause.
“He was very close (to signing for Arsenal). We had an agreement with the player,” Wenger said during an interview with beIN Sports.
“We had been wrongly advised that he had a clause, with a minimal clause, but we had an agreement with the player. You can ask him.
“I’m convinced he wanted to join us and then they sold him. They kept him one more year, improved his contract and promised to sell him the year later to a club abroad.”
In the end, it worked out well for Suarez, who joined Barcelona and now plays alongside Lionel Messi and Neymar. Wenger would never admit it, but he must regret not bidding more for the forward in 2013.
