LFCTS

Tony Barrett

Ten-match bite ban fuels thoughts of future away from Premier League

Luis Suárez is considering his future in English football after being left “shocked and disappointed” at a ten-match ban imposed by the Football Association for biting Branislav Ivanovic.

As things stand, the Liverpool forward will miss the final four games of this season and first six of the next campaign, which means he may be suspended until late September. Suárez has until midday tomorrow to decide whether to appeal against the suspension.

Should he choose to challenge the ban, which was confirmed by the FA yesterday after an independent regulatory commission hearing, Suárez would risk receiving additional penalties if the appeal was deemed frivolous.

That decision is the most pressing concern for both Suárez and Liverpool. Ian Ayre, the Liverpool managing director, said yesterday: “Both the club and player are shocked and disappointed at the severity of today’s independent regulatory commission decision. We await the written reasons before making any further comment.”

Suárez, 26, is weighing up whether it is in his best interests to stay in the Barclays Premier League, particularly as he is being pursued by a number of European clubs. Interest in him from Bayern Munich and Juventus is longstanding, while the Uruguay striker is also understood to figure on Atlético Madrid’s shortlist of potential replacements for Radamel Falcao, who is expected to leave them this summer.

Suárez is widely regarded as one of world football’s most talented forwards. Any interested parties would, however, have to take into account that his ban would apply outside the Premier League and it would be no surprise if his persistent disciplinary problems deterred potential suitors.

Liverpool’s attempts to mitigate against a hefty punishment involved Suárez being fined two weeks’ wages (about £240,000) and placed on a behavioural improvement programme under the guidance of Brendan Rodgers, the manager.

Significantly, Ayre stressed that the former Ajax player was not for sale. “As we keep saying, he signed a new four-year contract last summer and we’d all love to see him here throughout that contract,” Ayre said on Monday.

How Suárez reacts to his latest brush with football’s authorities will determine whether that remains achievable. The player believes the severity of the punishment is wholly out of proportion to the offence. In Liverpool’s favour is Suárez’s affection for the club and how settled he is in the Merseyside area, but those factors will count for nothing if he feels that he is being victimised.

Last season, Suárez received an eight-match ban and £40,000 fine after being found guilty, again by an independent regulatory commission, of racially abusing Patrice Evra, the Manchester United defender. Despite Suárez and Liverpool doubting the validity of that verdict, no appeal was lodged.

Today, the independent panel will submit its reasons for issuing Suárez with a ten-game ban — they must do so by 6pm — and Liverpool will digest the contents of the adjudication before deciding whether to appeal.

The three-man panel at yesterday’s hearing, made up of a chairman, a former player and an FA Council member, was presented with a written submission from Liverpool on Suárez’s behalf in the wake of the incident in the Premier League match against Chelsea at Anfield on Sunday.

Liverpool believed that Suárez would receive a lengthier suspension than the standard three games, but had not envisaged that the verdict would be so severe.

“A three-person independent regulatory commission upheld the FA’s claim that a suspension of three matches was clearly insufficient and the player will serve a further seven first-team matches in addition to the standard three. The suspension begins with immediate effect,” the FA said in a statement.

Liverpool’s psychiatrist plans to transform Uruguayan’s mindset without losing the edge to his game that makes him world-class

As soon as Luis Suárez sank his teeth into Branislav Ivanovic’s arm on Sunday, an inevitable chain of events occurred featuring everything from outrage and contrition to punishment and introspection. The other certainty was that the idea would be floated that his irrational behaviour could be corrected by Dr Steve Peters, Liverpool’s in-house psychiatrist.

Only the Professional Footballers’ Association missed that particular trick, offering anger management counselling to Suárez to counteract the kind of actions that Gabriel Gutiérrez, the former Uruguay national team psychologist, has described as “compulsive” and “not conscious”. If the 26-year-old is seeking that kind of help, he need only consult Peters, an expert in his field known as “the mind mechanic”, who is made available to all Liverpool players on a weekly basis.

Recently — and it must be stressed before Suárez’s latest indiscretion and without discussing the forward — Peters described his approach, detailing the methods he uses in an attempt to “unlock the potential” of those who utilise his expertise. The most thought-provoking assertion, which unquestionably applies to Suárez without having been applied to him, is the idea that there are players who have to run the risk of emotional overload to perform at their best.

Citing the experience of Craig Bellamy, who credits Peters with transforming his on-pitch personality, the 59-year-old debunks that theory, one that has been used in recent days to try to rationalise Suárez’s behaviour.

“When Craig worked with me, he did so well and one of the things he was upset by was that he felt he’d been misled for years into believing that unless he was aggressive on the pitch he wouldn’t perform well,” said Peters, having been given permission by Bellamy to discuss his case.

“That was turned on its head when he learnt to go in with a very different approach, remaining calm but very focused and driven because in my world calm doesn’t mean indifferent, calm means you are ready to now do a full attack. Craig learnt that and credit to him; he worked really hard with me and he succeeded in getting the skill, and it is a skill which means that some days you’re better than others.

“When he started doing that, I got a visit from one of the staff at Liverpool asking what it was I’d done with him because he was performing even better when he was calm. To me, that makes total sense and to Craig it did as well. That’s why he went public and told people that now he was calmer on the pitch, he was performing better. He felt he’d been misled by this myth that you have to be hyped up and angry to perform well.”

It is hypothetical, of course, particularly as Peters emphasises that all individuals are different, but it doesn’t take a significant leap of the imagination to envisage Suárez benefiting from a similar process.

The forward accepted a charge of violent conduct last night but contested the FA’s claim that a statutory three-match ban is insufficient. An independent regulatory commission will determine his fate at a hearing today, but regardless of how many matches his suspension runs to, Liverpool know that their most pressing concern is his rehabilitation rather than his punishment.

That is where Peters and his renowned ability to manage what he describes as “the inner chimp” could come in. He said: “My approach is to say, ‘Let’s look at the structure of your mind. Forget about the game for a moment. Let’s look at the rules of how the mind functions, then let’s apply these so you get some insight of what the mind does and doesn’t do and then let’s apply it to you specifically.’

“My expertise is working with a unique individual mind. Everyone is unique, so what works for you may not work for somebody else. We tend to act as human beings on belief systems that are hidden quite deep in us and we may not understand what they are or even recognise them, so my job is to try and get that out of people and discover what they are. If they are destructive beliefs, then we can remove them and replace them.”

If being at a club where such support is available is fortuitous for Suárez, so is his manager’s willingness to make the most of psychiatry through Peters’s talents. By doing so, Brendan Rodgers has given his most troubled player an opportunity to learn how to manage his behaviour within the confines of his own club. It is that kind of foresight that fuels Peters’s belief that Rodgers is predisposed to success, just like Sir Dave Brailsford, British Cycling’s performance director, with whom he also works.

“Knowing Brendan as I do, he has as good a chance as anyone of being successful because he’s got the building blocks,” Peters said. “When I first met him, he challenged me constructively, like Dave. That is welcome because I have to earn my respect.

“I told him what I could and couldn’t do, we discussed the team, individuals, himself, how we would move forward and he was able to see immediately that this is a long-term goal.

“That’s the same thing that Dave Brailsford had seen. This isn’t a quick fix, this is a skill base, a change in culture and attitude. They have the vision, it isn’t me. It’s their world, I’m the alien.”

Given recent events, it is hard to imagine that there has ever been a better time for Liverpool to have an alien in their midst.