Player of the Season nominees: Luis Suarez

With the season having ended, Sportskeeda decided to let its viewers rate the 30 best players of the season.

We will be shortlisting 30 of the best performers this term, and let you pick your winner.

What do you think? Have your say at the end of the article.

Luis Suarez

You can hail him as a diver, you can call him a cheat, brand him a racist and jeer him every time he gets on the ball. You can give a hundred reasons to hate his personality traits and yet you cannot stop admiring his class as a complete strike-package.

In a season best described as a roller-coaster ride for Liverpool, Luis Suarez has been the reason for them to dream of finishing every match he features in with the valuable three points, with his phenomenal ability to find the back of the net with ease and grace propelling them to victory. You can love him, you can hate him, but you certainly can’t ignore him!

Season Review

Luis Suarez is perhaps one the most lethal attackers in the Premier League. What grants him this title is his incredible balance and athleticism which makes him impossible to mark by even two or more players, besides the ease with which he fires his shots past a dumbfounded keeper into the back of the net.

This season, perhaps, has the been the best by his standards, where he netted a personal best of 30 goals in all competitions, finishing runners up to the Golden Boot winner Robin van Persie. He has also scored on several other accounts. Stats show that Luis Suarez this season has averaged 5.7 shots per game, the highest in the league. He also had the highest average player ratings this season with a whopping 7.89 (tied with Gareth Bale).

Suarez demonstrated his lethality from set pieces having scored some viciously amazing goals from direct free kicks this season. He opened his scoring this season with the screamer of a free kick against Manchester City at Anfield, which seemed to set the pace for all his goals to follow. Then of course he had Zenit Petersburg, Udinese and Wigan among some of his notable victims from free kicks.

Suarez has like all seasons, been the butt of all jokes at the hands of the media and his critics, most of which he has duly called on himself. As if the racism row last season was not enough, his first controversy this season came in October last year in a Merseyside derby. After scoring, he went all the way to the touchline to dive in front of David Moyes.

This came in reply to Moyes’s comments saying, “…divers such as Suarez were putting fans off the English game”. Then of course he was in the headlines for all the wrong reasons again with his handling the ball prior to his winning goal against Mansfield Town and then the horrible incident biting Chelsea‘s Branislav Ivanovic in the arm to gain a penalty in a deadlocked match. It got him a 10 match ban, leaving RVP the only horse running the Golden Boot race, and he was subjected to bitter criticism from all over the world.

Luis Suarez received a 10-match ban for biting Chelsea’s Brainislav Ivanovic during the game

Conclusion

After weighing up all the odds in favour and against our fiery Uruguayan, if we keep aside all the personality problems and controversies he has got himself wrapped up this season, he has only got better and more clinical before the goalpost. The way he dribbles past and makes a fool of defenders, create chances for his fellow Reds, makes magic out of the dead ball and scores, is indeed a treat to the eyes.

He is loved for his performances by both fans and rivals alike. He can move out of the EPL following the series of controversies and problems he has had, but that would only end up making the Premier League lose its shine and leave Liverpool in a mess. In my eyes, he certainly is one of the best, if not the best striker in the world.

Click here to view the rest of the Player of the Season nominees