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Why Luis Suarez makes my top 10 in Liverpool’s greatest players

LONDON, ENGLAND - Sunday, December 15, 2013: Liverpool's Luis Suarez celebrates scoring the fourth goal against Tottenham Hotspur during the Premiership match at White Hart Lane. (Pic by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)

Luis Suarez produced one of the greatest-ever individual seasons in Liverpool history in 2013/14, and Peter Bolster argues that he deserves a place in their all-time top 10.

When you measure greatness at Liverpool, longevity and silverware are usually the benchmarks.

Ian Rush scored 346 goals in 660 appearances and helped Liverpool win five league titles and two European Cups. Kenny Dalglish won six league titles and three European Cups as a player while becoming one of the defining figures in the club’s history.

Steven Gerrard played 710 games, lifted the Champions League, FA Cup and UEFA Cup, and carried Liverpool through some of its most turbulent years. Mo Salah has rewritten the club’s record books while helping deliver multiple Premier League titles and a sixth European Cup.

LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - Saturday, October 5, 2013: Liverpool's Luis Suarez in action against Crystal Palace during the Premiership match at Anfield. (Pic by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)

Against that backdrop, making the case for Luis Suarez can seem difficult. He spent just three-and-a-half seasons at Anfield. He never won the league. He left with only a League Cup winners’ medal and a trail of controversy.

Yet there is a reason many Liverpool supporters still speak about him with a reverence normally reserved for the club’s immortals.

While others built their legacies over a decade or more, Suarez reached a level that very few players in Liverpool’s history have ever touched.

A season like no other

NEWCASTLE-UPON-TYNE, ENGLAND - Saturday, October 19, 2013: Liverpool's Luis Suarez in action against Newcastle United during the Premiership match at St. James' Park. (Pic by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)

Suarez began the 2013/14 season in the stands. He was serving the final six games of a 10-match suspension for biting Chelsea‘s Branislav Ivanovic.

When he returned, he unleashed arguably the most devastating individual campaign English football has ever seen. In just 33 Premier League appearances, he scored 31 goals, none of them penalties, and provided 13 assists.

Those numbers mean he directly created or scored more than a goal per match. They are remarkable in isolation but take on greater significance when you consider he missed Liverpool’s first five league games and still won the Golden Boot.

He also struck the woodwork nine times, an astonishing statistic that suggests his output could have been even higher.

LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - Wednesday, December 4, 2013: Liverpool's Luis Suarez on his way to scoring his third goal against Norwich City during the Premiership match at Anfield. (Pic by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)

His goals were not padded with penalties or tap-ins. There were four against Norwich, hat-tricks against West Brom and Cardiff, a 40-yard half-volley against Fulham and slaloming runs past entire defences.

Gerrard, who shared a pitch with Robbie Fowler, Michael Owen, Fernando Torres and Wayne Rooney, still chose Suarez as the best striker he ever played alongside.

Jamie Carragher went even further, telling him directly that he believed he was the best centre-forward in the world.

Thierry Henry, hardly a man short of authority on the subject, described him as the best striker in the world and said he had everything: the aggression, the arrogance, the volleys, the headers, the instinct and the edge.

That is the point. Suarez was not merely admired by Liverpool supporters looking back through red-tinted nostalgia. He was recognised by the greats.

Those who had played with him, trained against him or understood the demands of elite forward play saw something different. Alongside Daniel Sturridge, he formed the SAS partnership that terrorised the Premier League, but even that phrase can make it sound too balanced.

Sturridge was brilliant. Suarez was something else entirely.

It is no coincidence that a Liverpool side which had finished seventh the previous year suddenly looked like champions once he returned from suspension and began bending matches to his will.

The title that slipped away

LONDON, ENGLAND - Monday, May 5, 2014: Liverpool's Luis Suarez looks dejected after he sees his side's three goal lead disappear as they draw 3-3 with Crystal Palace during the Premiership match at Selhurst Park. (Pic by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)

Critics often point to Suarez’s lack of silverware at Anfield as the decisive argument against him. Unlike Rush, Dalglish or Salah, he didn’t deliver a league title.

But context matters. Liverpool finished the 2013/14 season two points behind Man City.

The season is remembered for Gerrard’s slip against Chelsea and the collapse at Crystal Palace, but one crucial detail is often overlooked: the club’s best player missed the first five matches.

Even with that handicap, he still amassed 31 goals and 13 assists.

Had he been on the pitch from day one, and had just one or two of his nine efforts off the woodwork gone in, Liverpool might well have been champions. The suspension that tarnished his reputation may also have cost him the medal that would settle this debate.

Peak against peak: Suarez vs. Salah

It is impossible to assess Suarez’s place in Liverpool history without comparing him to the player who has come closest to matching his peak: Salah.

In 2024/25, Salah produced an astonishing season. By early February, he had 21 league goals and 13 assists – a pace that immediately drew comparisons with Suarez’s 2013/14 campaign.

He would go on to record 29 goals and 18 assists in 38 matches, equalling the Premier League record of 47 goal involvements previously set by Alan Shearer and Andrew Cole. Those numbers underline Salah’s greatness.

He played every league game, broke records and, crucially, won the league title.

Luis Suarez vs. Mo Salah: Liverpool’s all-time greats compared

||||

|Luis Suarez (2013/14)|Mo Salah (2024/25)|

|---|---|---|

|Apps|33|38|

|Goals|31|29|

|Assists|13|18|

|Mins per G/A|67.4|71.9|

On raw statistics, the comparison is remarkably close. Suarez averaged 0.94 goals per game and 1.3 goal contributions per game despite missing Liverpool’s opening five league matches through suspension.

Salah’s 2024/25 return was 0.76 goals per game and 1.24 goal contributions per game. Salah scored nine penalties and played in a more balanced side; Suarez took none and played in a team whose defence conceded 50 league goals.

The madness of the season is that even those numbers did not feel like the outer limit of what he was producing. Suarez was not squeezing every last drop out of a purple patch; he was playing at a level where 31 league goals, 13 assists and no penalties still somehow felt like an incomplete reflection of his dominance.

The other crucial difference is context. Salah’s record-breaking season delivered Liverpool’s 20th league title and cemented his place among the club’s immortals. He was the outstanding player in a title-winning machine.

LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - Saturday, October 26, 2013: Liverpool's Luis Suarez celebrates scoring the second goal against West Bromwich Albion with team-mate Aly Cissokho during the Premiership match at Anfield. (Pic by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)

Suarez’s masterpiece, by contrast, elevated a side featuring Kolo Toure, Jon Flanagan, Aly Cissokho and Victor Moses starting league games to within two points of ending a 24-year wait for the title.

Liverpool conceded 50 league goals that season. They were not a complete side and they were not supposed to be title contenders. Yet, for months, they looked unstoppable because the best player in the country was producing football that bordered on the absurd.

This is not an attempt to diminish Salah. Quite the opposite. His 2024/25 campaign belongs among the finest individual seasons any Liverpool player has produced.

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND - Sunday, March 16, 2014: Liverpool's Luis Suarez celebrates scoring the third goal against Manchester United during the Premiership match at Old Trafford. (Pic by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)

The point is that even when measured against Salah at his absolute best, Suarez’s 2013/14 season does not come out second best.

In fact, there is a compelling argument that it remains the highest peak reached by any Liverpool player in the Premier League era. If Salah’s greatness was rewarded with the league title it deserved, Suarez’s greatness fell just two points short.

One season ended with a trophy. The other arguably should have.

More than numbers

Numbers explain only part of why Suarez belongs in Liverpool’s all-time top 10. He played football with a ferocity and imagination that made every match an event.

At Anfield, there was a palpable sense of anticipation whenever he touched the ball. Supporters came to believe that anything – a goal from 40 yards, a nutmeg in a packed penalty area, a solo run through a wall of defenders – was possible. His hunger for the ball and refusal to accept defeat infected team-mates and supporters alike.

For a generation of Liverpool supporters, Suarez did more than score goals. He made a title challenge feel possible again.

Between 1990 and 2014, Liverpool spent years chasing memories of past greatness. For the first time in a generation, supporters walked into every match believing their team had the best player on the pitch and a genuine chance of becoming champions.

For neutrals, he offered a chaotic, anarchic joy rarely seen since Diego Maradona.

LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND - Sunday, March 6, 2011: Liverpool and Manchester United players clash after United's Rafael Da Silva dived in two-footed with a horrific challenge on Lucas Leiva during the Premiership match at Anfield. Pictured: Lucas Leiva, Luis Alberto Suarez Diaz, Martin Skrtel, Sotirios Kyrgiakos, Chris Paul Scholes, Glen Johnson, Patrice Evra. (Photo by David Rawcliffe/Propaganda)

His controversies cannot be ignored. He served bans for racially abusing Patrice Evra and for biting Ivanovic and later Giorgio Chiellini. Those actions rightly stained his reputation.

Yet, when assessing the greatest footballers to play for Liverpool, the question is about what happened with a ball at his feet. On that measure, his genius cannot be dismissed.

You cannot rewrite the club’s history without including the season when Suarez seemed to bend reality. For three blistering years, he was the best player in England by some distance. That level, albeit brief, deserves a place in the pantheon.

If the season ends differently, does the argument even exist?

The case against Suarez always comes back to the same point: he wasn’t here long enough. Yet football supporters are remarkably willing to overlook brevity when greatness is attached to silverware.

Imagine Salah had left Liverpool in the summer of 2018. He would have spent only one season at Anfield, but it would have been a season containing 32 league goals, a Champions League final and one of the greatest individual campaigns English football had ever seen.

Would Liverpool supporters seriously argue that such a player could not belong in the club’s top 10 because he had only stayed a year?

Fast-forward to 2024/25 and the question becomes even more interesting. If Salah had departed immediately after delivering Liverpool’s 20th league title, would his place among the club’s greats really be disputed?

Probably not.

Because, at some point, a peak becomes so extraordinary that it transcends longevity. That is where Suarez sits.

The difference is not necessarily the quality of the football. The difference is that Salah’s greatest seasons are attached to medals, while Suarez’s finest campaign finished two points short.

If Liverpool had found three more points in 2013/14, this debate would almost certainly not exist. Instead of asking whether Suarez belongs in Liverpool’s top 10, supporters would be arguing about how high he should rank.

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