It would seem as if Liverpool owner John W. Henry has finally admitted that contracts in world football are actually not worth the paper they are written on when it comes to transfers as reported on TalkSport.
During last summer when Liverpool striker Luis Suarez was talking about leaving Anfield, Arsenal put in an audacious bid of £40 million plus £1 in order to trigger the Uruguayans buyout clause and allow them to begin negotiations with Suarez.
Henry when speaking last weekend at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference more or less made it clear that Liverpool decided that they were just not going to sell buyout clause or not.
“Luis Suarez is the top scorer in the English Premier League which is arguably the top soccer league in the world,” Henry said.
“And he had a buy-out clause – I don’t know what degree I should go into this – but he had a buy-out clause of £40million – more than 60 million (US) dollars. So Arsenal, one of our prime rivals this year … they offered £40million and one pound for him and triggered his buy-out clause.
“But what we’ve found over the years is that contracts don’t seem to mean a lot in England – actually not in England, in world football. It doesn’t matter how long a player’s contract is, he can decide he’s leaving.
“We sold Fernando Torres for £50million. We didn’t want to sell but we were forced to.
“For the first time (with Suarez) we took the position that we weren’t selling.
“Since apparently these contracts don’t seem to hold, we took the position we’re just not selling and it’s been great for Luis, it’s been great for us, and what will happen at the end of year … I think we”re going to make Champions League and we have a small chance of winning the Premier League this year.
“We have three gentlemen up front: Suarez, (Raheem) Sterling and (Daniel) Sturridge. Those three are young, and I think Luis and those three could be together for a long time.”
