Rio Ferdinand has told Brendan Rodgers that Liverpool need to keep Luis Suarez, even though the striker will miss the start of the season as he serves a four-month ban from all football.
Suarez was
banned by FIFA after world football's governing body found the Uruguay forward guilty of biting Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini in a World Cup Group G match.
Uruguay have
launched an appeal against the decision, which includes their next nine international matches as well as precluding Suarez from "all football-related activity" until two months into the next club season. It is his third biting-related suspension in the past four years.
But former Manchester United defender Ferdinand believes that English football's reigning double Player of the Year --
a reported target for Barcelona -- is indispensable at Anfield.
"If I were the Liverpool manager, there wouldn't be a moment's doubt about what to do next with Luis Suarez," Ferdinand wrote in The Mail on Sunday. "I'd keep him.
"Leave aside, just for a moment, questions of morality or whether his ban is long enough and what is going on is his head to make him do these extraordinarily bad things.
"Purely and simply from a football perspective, what he does for you on the pitch -- and I don't mean biting people -- makes him indispensable.
"And with the season Liverpool have ahead of them, that's truer than ever.
They had a brilliant 2013-14, pushing for the title when many people thought they might struggle to get into the top four.
Although they didn't win it they were superb, with Suarez the single most significant reason for that.
"The Premier League will be at least as tough next season, and probably much tougher with Louis van Gaal at a new-look Manchester United. Liverpool will have Champions League football, too, so any manager at Anfield would want Suarez in the team.
"So that's the football decision. It's an easy one to make."