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“Senior Sources At Arsenal Say They Won’t Pay £50m For Suárez”

By on August 5, 2013

I listened to some interesting insight into Arsenal’s pursuit of Luis Suarez last night on BBC Radio 5 Live. You can listen to a re-run here.

Mark Pougatch analysed the Suarez situation with a number of people including former Liverpool director football Damien Comolli, the Daily Mirror’s Oliver Holt and Tim Payton from the Arsenal Supporters Trust.

But it was the input from BBC Sports David Ornstein that interested me most. Ornstein claims to have directly spoken to senior sources at Arsenal who told him that the club will not be prepared to go to £50m to sign Suarez because they feel their £40m bid should be enough to land the controversial hitman.

Pougatch asked Ornstein is Arsenal would pay £50m for Suarez, to which he replied:

“No, I don’t Mark. And that comes from speaking to senior sources at Arsenal yesterday who indicated they won’t go to £50m for Suarez.

That’s a direct result of the fact that they think they’ve done enough to get him as it is. They think they’ve triggered a clause in his contract, that despite it being disputed by Liverpool, will do enough to get him to the Emirates Stadium.

The key thing is that Liverpool think, no it wont”

He goes on to say that Suarez is now battling with Liverpool’s hierarchy, who he claims have gone back on a verbal agreement that they would allow him to leave to any Champions League club for £40m this summer. So while Suarez fights it out with Liverpool, Arsenal are basically waiting to see how it develops.

It’s quite a dilemma for us really. No doubt Suarez’s advisers have told Arsenal about the verbal agreement so we submitted a rather antagonising £40,000,001 bid that we thought would be accepted. It’s turns out Liverpool have decided to renege on their verbal agreement and chose to reject our offer.

The next step is to either go back and really test their resolve with a £50m bid – which many fans feel we should do – but Arsene Wenger has decided to wait it out and see if Suarez can force the move by winning his argument over this apparent verbal agreement.

The problem is, Arsenal are probably the last club Liverpool would want to sell to even if they backed down. We finished fourth last season and are yet to add to our squad significantly, so if Liverpool have any aspirations of qualifying for the Champions League next year, we look like the most likely to drop out of the top four, so why would they strengthen us. By selling us Suarez, they would pretty much kiss goodbye to any hopes of a top-four finish.

I really can’t predict how this is going to play out, but if Ornstein’s correct and we wont go to £50m, then the only way I see Suarez ending up at the Emirates is if he hands in a transfer request and makes it impossible for Liverpool to keep hold of him.

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What do you make of the Suarez situation? Do you think we should put in a £50m bid?