Jamie Carragher once said Luis Suarez cost Liverpool the league title in 2014 due to ‘appalling’ action a year prior
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Liverpool had to wait 30 years to win their first Premier League title, but it could have come a lot sooner.
The Reds have always been one of English football’s most dominant teams and are a powerhouse all over the world, but there have been times when they did not act like it.
The early to mid 2010s were a tricky period for Liverpool as the club was in a bit of turmoil and the ownership had just changed, with the direction in which they were going in then unknown.
However, amid all the problems, the Reds almost managed to win the Premier League in 2014 against all odds, but a collapse at the end of the season meant they missed out by two points.
Many have their reasons for why this happened, with many rivals quick to point out the Steven Gerrard moment, but some have other theories.
And, Liverpool legend Jamie Carragher once said that the reasoning all boils down to one man: Luis Suarez.
Photo by Simon Stacpoole/Mark Leech Sports Photography/Getty Images
There was no denying Suarez’s talent as he really was an exceptional football player, but the same cannot really be said for a human being.
Throughout his career, he has developed a reputation that not many would want, although he seems to enjoy being the pantomime villain.
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With that said, the Uruguayan took things way too far – again – in 2013 after biting Chelsea player Branislav Ivanovic, making this the second time he had bitten a player in his career after also doing it at Ajax.
If that was not bad enough alone, the Reds striker was then banned for 10 games, a suspension that carried over to the 2013/14 campaign, something Carragher once said cost Liverpool the league.
“You know what I think on that, I think that moment cost Liverpool the league the next season,” he said on Sky Sports back in 2019.
“This is because Luis Suarez was banned for 10 games, and he missed the first three of that new season.
“Liverpool lost the league on goal difference, Suarez was the best player by a mile in the league that season, he scored about 34 goals.
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“In those first three or four games he missed, Liverpool lost at home to Southampton 1-0 and drew away to Swansea, so they dropped five points.
“If Suarez was playing, they would have probably won both of them, so looking back now, I believe that if he was playing in those games, he would have won Liverpool at least another two or three points.”
At the time, former Liverpool player Alan Hansen summed it up nicely by labelling it an ‘appalling’ act, but despite this, the striker did not learn his lesson.
Suarez’s bite on Ivanovic was one of three throughout his career, with the third coming just 14 months later on Giorgio Chiellini at the World Cup.
Many Liverpool fans thought he did this to try and force a move to Barcelona, but that simply is not the case as he was actually already in the process of going and, if anything, he thought this might scupper his chances.
The Uruguayan has not bitten anyone since, however, as of September 2025, he has been banned for another six games for spitting on a member of the Seattle Sounders management team.
In total, if Suarez’s bans were all to be added up, including the eight-game ban he received for racially abusing Manchester United’s Patrice Evra in 2011, he has missed 40 games due to his shocking behaviour.