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• Manager calls Suárez’s ‘unassuming’ and ‘fantastic’
• Dalglish denies racism is a problem in English football

Kenny Dalglish has always had a dry sense of humour but the Liverpool manager was deadly serious on Friday when he described Luis Suárez as a “great ambassador” for the club.

In terms of attacking excellence, Liverpool could wish for few better role models than the Uruguay striker but there is another side to Suárez, one that serves as a magnet for controversy.

The forward’s seven goals in 12 games for Dalglish’s team this season have arrived against a background of assorted incidents, including an accusation of diving from Sir Alex Ferguson and, rather more seriously, racism by Manchester United’s Patrice Evra. Suárez vehemently denies the latter suggestion and has been backed strongly by his manager, who last week issued a robust defence of the 24-year-old’s integrity. On Friday Dalglish was simply eager to talk about the former Ajax striker’s “humility”.

“Luis has been fantastic and the great thing about him is that he is very unassuming as well,” he said, ahead of Liverpool’s trip to West Bromwich Albion, a game Suárez may have to sit out with an ankle injury. “Everybody can see what he can do on the pitch, but he has got no edge to him. He doesn’t think he is better than anyone else.

“He is a great ambassador for the football club. For us, as well as his football, the other things he brings to the club are very important as well. He is just a fantastic person as well as a fantastic footballer. As I have said before, he has only been here since January and already we are running out of compliments to pay him, which I suppose is a huge compliment in itself.”

Reiterating his assertion that Suárez has Liverpool’s full support in rebutting the Evra accusations, Dalglish said he did not believe that English football harbours a problem with racism.

“I don’t think it is prevalent in the game here, and it certainly isn’t at this football club,” he said. “We have got a case going on which seems to be dragging its feet. We would rather have it done and dusted, out in the open and whoever is the guilty party, whether it’s the person who said it or the accuser, [should] get their due punishment. We look forward to ours coming to a conclusion. For me, I don’t see racism, as far as this football club is concerned, apparent in any way, shape or form.”

Kenny DalglishLiverpoolLouise Taylorguardian.co.uk

The Uruguayan ran Manchester United ragged at Anfield last season and his manager is hoping for a repeat from his No7

The mood, the manager, the net spend, the debt and the lack of revulsion at American owners; the changes at Liverpool since the high court verdict that saved them from Tom Hicks and George Gillett exactly 12 months ago are well-established now. It is the impact of Luis Suárez, however, that has afforded Anfield a transformation where it matters most.

Fenway Sports Group has been accused of overspending on some assets in the quest to reclaim Champions League status but, nine months after a £22.8m deal with Ajax, the Uruguay international represents a sound investment. Suárez has injected goals and assists into Liverpool’s play but also the win-at-all-costs mentality that, despite the damage to his own reputation at times, was lacking when John W Henry first observed his acquisition at Goodison Park last year and a disillusioned Fernando Torres pursued aimless long balls down the channels.

This week the 24-year-old also proved the exception to Kenny Dalglish’s general media rule of tempering expectancy. “I don’t know how Manchester United think but I’m sure they will know what he did to them last year,” the Liverpool manager said. “They know what he is capable of and that is their problem.”

It was the corresponding fixture last season, Liverpool’s third successive victory at home over a United side about to overtake them on 19 league titles and Steven Gerrard’s last start before injury, when Suárez announced that his arrival into English football was not only seamless but liable to revise the timescale placed on the club’s recovery. Two moments illustrated his gifts to a disbelieving Anfield audience. The latter came in the 86th minute with Liverpool cruising 3-0 and Suárez, having spun and sprinted beyond two United defenders only to slice his shot into the Kop, kicked out at the advertising hoardings in disgust. The first, when he beat Rafael da Silva, Chris Smalling, Michael Carrick and Wes Brown to send Dirk Kuyt on his way to a hat-trick, defies explanation even from a striker of Dalglish’s pedigree.

“I don’t know how he did it,” he admitted. “It’s not the first time he’s done that, maybe it was in terms of how many he went past, but each of the individual things he used to get past people he had done before. He just collated them in the one run. But he has got other things to his bow apart from that. Dirk scored a hat-trick but if you added up the distance of all his goals I don’t think you’d get outside the six-yard box – it was two yards, two yards and two yards. But they were a vital two yards.

“For me, Luis has made a fantastic contribution. He does something different every time you see him. I think the problem people have with Luis is that they don’t know what is coming next, but he does and that’s helpful. We just hope he continues to surprise us. But pleasantly.”

Along with every other Premier League manager this week, Dalglish’s opinion was sought on Wayne Rooney’s costly indiscretion in Montenegro. His reply lends itself as easily to Suárez as it does the divisive England international. “It is not just Wayne Rooney but any footballer; the characteristics make the person and the person is what makes the footballer. If you don’t like the personality, you might not get the footballer,” he said.

In his autobiography, Pepe Reina tells of how he “loved” the Uruguay international from the moment he set foot on to the training pitches at Melwood. “I could tell straight away that he had a bit of the devil in him and that he was going to be really exciting to watch,” the Liverpool goalkeeper writes. “He has so much talent and so much potential that there is no reason why he cannot become a truly great player, someone who gets supporters on the edge of their seats and has people talking about him all the time because he is so good.”

It remains a challenge for Suárez to convince an audience beyond Liverpool and Uruguay to appreciate his talent without reservation. To Ghanaians, Otman Bakkal – the PSV Eindhoven player he bit while at Ajax – and others tired of the theatrics, that may be an impossibility but the man of the tournament during his nation’s Copa América triumph this summer has the ability to present a firm argument. Dalglish insists Suárez has the character too.

The Liverpool manager added: “Everyone can see what he has done on the pitch but he is a fantastic personality in and around the place. He was happy and smiling from the moment he signed and that helps. He settled in very quickly, moved into a house very quickly and scored on his debut against Stoke when he came on as a substitute, so everything went well for him. He seems happy with his life.”

LiverpoolAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk

What is the Premier League if not capitalism without democracy? China and Liverpool FC are made for each other

Is there some kind of tear in the very fabric of the news universe? It has been a week in which areas one would hope to be discrete have collapsed troublingly into one other. Not only has Naomi Campbell been to the Hague, but the People’s Republic of China is frontrunner to buy Liverpool football club. Well, I say the People’s Republic itself, though obviously that would put pressure on space in the directors’ box at Anfield. Rather, the bid is being fronted by the entrepreneur Kenny Huang, but is widely believed to be financially backed by the China Investment Corporation, the investment arm of the Chinese government.

Though it’s not even the first time representatives of a foreign government have tried to buy Liverpool – Thaksin Shinawatra had a crack while he was still Thai prime minister – this latest development would seem to mark the moment at which the already storied history of the Premier League finally tipped into overblown satire. We’re now officially living in the age of the football-industrial complex.

Clearly, any China-backed purchase of Liverpool would offer excellent potential for cultural exchange – I should like Mao’s embalmed body to be brought for a ceremonial lying in state in front of the Kop, or at the very least to see the old devil paraded for photocall in the manner of a new star signing, ideally wearing a strip reading CHAIRMAN on the back. As yet, the benefits of Liverpool gaining representation on the UN security council are unquantified, but can be surely estimated as being worth at least three points a season.

Such synergies all depend, of course, on the Chinese government being able to pass the Premier League’s “fit and proper person” test for new owners – although famously, no one has ever failed it. In fact, I couldn’t be more sure of an outcome were Usain Bolt to offer to race me to the corner shop.

In the interests of accuracy, the aforementioned test has been renamed the “owners and directors test”, presumably because post-Thaksin et al it became impossible to say “fit and proper person” without doing immensely sarcastic air quotes. What the amendment to this flimsiest of forms shakes down to is a requirement for would-be owners to prove they have the funds to sustain a club, which, Premier League’s chief executive Richard Scudamore has declared, will prevent “a repeat of the Portsmouth situation”. How long before the league finally accepts its geopolitical importance, and Scudamore upgrades his silly little test “to prevent a repeat of the Korean peninsula situation”?

For now, though I’m no expert, one imagines Beijing will be good for the cash. China is apparently doing quite well at the moment, and while there’ll doubtless be the usual gripes about not wanting to pay over the odds for a right back, it probably helps if the person holding the purse strings is the second largest economy in the world as opposed to Dave Whelan.

As for further background checks, I think the powers that be will recognise a clubbable sort in the Chinese government. When itinerant chiseller Sven-Göran Eriksson was weighing up whether to take the job managing Manchester City, then owned by Thaksin, he deployed the most rigorous of vetting procedures to assess the former Thai PM’s record. “It was enough for me to make a phone call to [Premier League chairman] Sir Dave Richards,” Eriksson explained. “He [replied], ‘Absolutely clean’.”

That’s how it works, you see. Though not a noted expert in south-east Asian politics – Thaksin’s human rights record had been widely condemned and he was under threat of corruption and fraud charges – Sir Dave is what is known in the game as a “football man”. Considering that fellow holders of this epithet include Ken Bates and Phil Gartside, you might suspect “football man” is merely a euphemism for a word we don’t print in the Guardian unless it’s in reported speech. But “football men” have made the Premier League what it is, bless them, and it would take more than whinges about state-sponsored human rights abuse to take the wind out of their radioactive self-belief.

Just as modern China is a grimly chastening rebuke to those who claimed you can’t have capitalism without democracy, so the Premier League of recent years has been a similarly rude slap in the face to those who declare you can’t just waltz in and buy a club and imagine you own it. One of the running jokes beloved of my colleagues on the Fiver about this period is to parrot the Bill Shankly-inspired line that “118 years of history and tradition isn’t for sale” – before adding “except when it is”.

In the end, what is the history of the Premier League, if not capitalism without democracy? Whether disgusted fans of any team think that this year’s passing oligarch or asset-stripper truly “owns” their club is presumably a matter of as much concern to said oligarchs or asset-strippers as the views of peasants are to the Chinese government. Which is to say, bugger all concern. The only surprise about China’s bid is that the so-called People’s Republic didn’t alight on the Premier League sooner. They really are made for each other.

LiverpoolChinaPremier LeagueNaomi CampbellMarina Hydeguardian.co.uk