Liverpool legend, Jamie Carragher, has claimed Luis Suarez cost the Reds the Premier League title.
The Uruguay striker was the Premier League’s top scorer during his final season at Liverpool, when the Reds missed out on the title by just two points.
But Carragher feels the seed for that near-miss was sown the season before, when Suarez bit Chelsea defender, Branislav Ivanovic, during a 2-2 draw at Anfield in April 2013.
Suarez was banned for 10 matches, missing the last four games of that Premier League campaign and the first six of the next.
Despite the lengthy ban, he finished the 2013-14 season with an impressive 31 goals from 33 matches and was voted PFA Player of the Year and Football Writers’ Association Player of the Year.
But it was not enough to fire Liverpool to the Premier League title, as they were pipped by Manchester City after Steven Gerrard’s infamous slip against Chelsea.
Talking about the draw with Chelsea in 2013, Carragher told Sky Sports: “I wasn’t aware of any of this but got back into the dressing room and then word comes in that Luiz has bit Ivanovic.
“Someone asked him and he denied it. I think on that, that it cost Liverpool the league the next season.
“Suarez was banned for five or six games (the following season). Suarez was the best player by a mile in the league – he scored almost every game.
“In the first four games he missed, Liverpool lost 1-0 to Southampton and drew at Swansea. They dropped five points.
“If Suarez is playing, they probably win both of them, but let’s be conservative, you beat Southampton at home.
“You don’t realise at the time, looking back now, and the season he had the next year, player of the year, football writers’ player of the year, I think if he’d been playing in those games it would’ve been different.”
Suarez signed for Barcelona for £74million in the summer of 2014, after four seasons with Liverpool.
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