Luis Suarez – Wasteful Playmaker or Prolific Finisher?

Luis Suarez is someone who is never absent from a footballing debate and everyone has an opinion on him. Racist, diver, world class, legend are the contrasting views that people hold of him, but prolific goalscorer is one that hasn’t been attributed to him yet.
Sure, he’s a great player with a lot of dubious activity on the side, but a goalscorer? That hasn’t been the usual image of Suarez, but after his start to this season could it be about to change?
Suarez arrived in England on a transfer from Ajax in January 2010. The majority of football fans knew three things about him; he scored 49 goals in 48 appearances the season before, he was once banned for biting an opponent and he deliberately handballed in the quarter finals of a World Cup, celebrating when the resulting penalty was missed. Those three facts may be enough to give you a general picture of ‘El Pistolero’, the magical footballing ability coupled with the nasty side. As we are all aware, this reputation has followed him to England and he has made headlines for both sides of his footballing character. When it comes to his antics, people are in a general agreement; that is to say that he is a diver and a cheat. There is also a general agreement about his footballing ability, but that may now be starting to change.
It didn’t take long for people to start to notice the magic of Suarez’s footballing ability. The twisting turns, the mazy dribbles and the nutmegs. So many nutmegs. But you can almost hear Alan Hansen on a Saturday night (or Sunday night as it usually is for Liverpool now) say “He can do all that but he can’t finish” as he analyses one of many clips of Suarez turning away from two players before snatching at his shot and putting it over the bar. For the first year and a half of Suarez playing for Liverpool, the consensus was that he was a gifted playmaker, but ultimately a wasteful one; someone was needed to finish the chances that he would create.
Thus, a lot of recent transfer talk regarding Liverpool has been who they could get in to score goals; it was seen as a problem area because Suarez wasn’t seen to be the 20 goal a season striker that every club wants to have. However, with Liverpool frightfully lacking in strikers this season he had stood up and has started scoring goals at a prolific rate. He is currently the league’s top scorer with 10 goals and is practically scoring every goal that Liverpool score. So why so prolific all of a sudden?
Whenever you saw Suarez miss chance after chance you struggled to believe that he could score 49 goals in 48 games for Ajax. Sure, the Dutch league is a step below the Premiership but the record of a goal-a-game over the course of a season is a very rare occurrence, no matter where you play. One noteworthy thing is that he achieved this in his 3^rd season at Ajax; in his previous seasons he had scored 22 and 28 goals. 20 goals in a season is still impressive, but he was able to take it up another notch in his 3^rd season. Suarez currently finds himself in his 3^rd season at Liverpool and has started it fantastically. It seems to be a major coincidence that once again he raised his performance in his 3^rd season at a club. Unfortunately he didn’t complete his 4^th season at Ajax because of his transfer to Liverpool so we can’t really say for sure if it was just a run of form or a genuine increase in ability. But we can still speculate either way.

One question is why would it take him until his 3^rd season to reach his full potential at a club? It’s not a rare thing to hear of a player taking time to settle into a new environment, with new teammates and a new league but taking 2 years to fully settle in does seem a long time. It is perfectly feasible that Suarez is just a slow learner, but for a player of his quality you wouldn’t think so. It would suggest that he is merely in good form, his not settling in wouldn’t have caused him to miss chance after chance last season. Maybe the similarities with his time at Ajax are just a coincidence, but I don’t know. For me this is the key, if I don’t know; do Liverpool?
This is quite important for Liverpool because if Suarez has realised his full potential and is now a goal scoring machine, then they would be in the market for somebody to create chances for him. However if he is merely just in a good vein of form, they want someone to score goals regularly. No doubt Liverpool need a striker, their strike force is desperately thin, but what kind of striker?
I think right now, they can’t be sure who they need. I’m interested to see who Brendan Rodgers brings in to play with Suarez; talk of his old Ajax striker partner Klaaus-Jan Huntelaar being available must be an interesting prospect. Also, prolific finisher Darren Bent must also be an attractive option. Both of these players are goal scorers, and you would expect to see Suarez playing behind them or in support of them. Given his goal scoring exploits this season, would that be the right thing to do?
It’s a very interesting dilemma. Is Suarez now a prolific goal scorer or is he still a wasteful playmaker who finds himself in good form? I hope I have demonstrated how this question is actually important for Liverpool and how it may affect their transfer policy. For the club, they may be wanting to capitalise on his current form and get as many goals out of him as they can, but in the long run they should be addressing what kind of striker Suarez is now and who would best compliment his style of play.
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