Luis Suarez: Liverpool’s post man intends to deliver more by choosing power …

Saturday, 25 August 2012

Luis Suarez

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Nobody hit the post more in the Premier League last season than Luis Suarez. His incredible strike rate in the Netherlands has added to the feeling that he should be scoring more for Liverpool.

“In trying to be so precise and trying to make sure the keeper will not get to the shot, you go for the corners and you hit the posts,” he says. “Maybe I should just try to hit them harder this season.” He suggests that the figures from the Eredivisie flatter him. “I was lucky to score with my shoulder and my stomach, they all seemed to go in.”

A change in Liverpool’s style, where playing out from the back is not so much encouraged as compulsory, can only help him. “It’s as he [Brendan Rodgers] says: if all our defenders are very opened out and the goalkeeper is able to play a bit it is impossible for the other team to get the ball off of you when you bring it out from the back unless you make a simple mistake with a bad pass.

“It’s an intelligent way to see the game and we have to adapt to it. For me as a striker here in England against defenders who are all tall and strong a long punt forward is no good to me at all.”

So how quickly will adaptation lead to a charge at the title? “Lots of players in Spain have said to me that what the Premier League has over La Liga is that you never know in any given game what is going to happen because the teams are so well-matched. In Spain you have that power that Barcelona and Madrid have over the rest.”

Overhauling Manchester City will not be easy but it is a long way from being impossible. And he is playing for a man with a plan, albeit an ambitious one.

“Obviously we are not going to start playing like Bara overnight,” says Suarez of his manager’s desire to play passing football. “But the manager was studying in Spain and in Barcelona and in Holland too where they play good football. It’s a beautiful idea. We have to have the ball as much as possible and pressure the opposition as much as possible when we don’t have it. It is about not getting desperate and impatient in possession and just waiting for the space to make the right pass.

“The pressure has to be more intense and I have to be the first player on the pitch to apply it. None of this is easy, but you have to have the idea and the intention in the first place, and then you go about learning to put it into practice.”

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