Hmmm, not sure Swarbs. Thats fine with a happy player who'll keep his mouth shut. If the player wants away then that seems pointless as his agent will tell every interested club anyway. Might be technically breaking the confidentiality of the existing contract but you'd have to prove it.
This is true, although you assume that the player would be willing to undermine the club in such a way. Given the respect Suarez has for Liverpool and their fans, I don't think he'd take that tactic. Similar to Ronaldo at Utd - he wanted away for a few years and he and his agent could have pulled all sorts of nasty **** like leaking stuff to the media, refusing to play, playing badly etc. But he had enough respect for the club to allow them to negotiate a massive fee rather than force his way out for a lower amount.
I don't think Suarez dislikes Liverpool enough to leak details of the clause at this stage. If he truly wants away, and assuming there is a clause, I reckon he will try to let Liverpool negotiate freely first and get as much money as they can out of Real, Barca or whoever. It's only if Liverpool refuse to negotiate at all, or try to force him to join a club he doesn't want to, that his agent would leak details of the clause.
IIRC that was what happened with Jones - he only wanted to join Utd but Liverpool and Arsenal were willing to pay more. Venky's insisted he join the club with the highest offer, so his agent leaked details of the clause to Utd and Utd got him.
Also, I don't see why FSG would allow that clause in at renegotiation time. He still had 3 years left on old contract & a track record for forcing moves on when he wanted.
Just can't see us saying, "yeah on paper we've extended it to 2 more years, paid you more money but basically signed control away from us if you fancy leaving."
Where in that mythical deal is there advantage to FSG? What possible reason would they have to take away any power to make cash off their investment. I could see it if it had been part of the original deal to bring him here but all the rumours tried to suggest it was added in the renegotiation.
That assumes he would have been willing to sign a new contract without the clause, and assuming that the original deal didn't have some sort of clause in it anyway. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if it was a contingent clause based on either qualifying for the CL or being very close to qualifying.
Rodgers admitted before he signed the contract that a lot of clubs were interested in signing him, and Suarez himself wasn't all that happy at the time, so the new contract could have been a "give us another season to get close to the CL and if we don't then you can leave for £40m plus". Of course it's all just speculation, and like you say we'll see what happens this summer, but none of it is really beyond the realms of possibility in football.
the club goes on trying to improve.
