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“What do you think they’re smoking over there at Emirates?”.

Back when Arsenal came calling for Luis Suarez in 2013, Liverpool’s principal owner John W. Henry showed that he was in no mood to part with the club’s most valuable asset on the cheap.

Learning from the harsh lessons of previous Reds regimes, FSG are earning a reputation for being one of the best in the business when it comes to driving a hard bargain.

A year after Arsenal offered £40million plus £1 for Luis Suarez, the player was eventually sold to Barcelona for almost double the price (£75million).

As much as it smarted at the time, getting £50million from Chelsea for a Fernando Torres who had already been reduced to a shadow of his former self through injuries in January 2011 was a shrewd piece of business.

And fast forward to this summer, Liverpool are determined to have their £50million valuation met for Raheem Sterling, no matter what kind of antics the want-away winger might try and employ.

We’re all selling clubs now

For fans of any club, the mere thought that one of their favourites might want to play for anyone else is galling enough but every professional team in world football has to be a selling club at some point these days.

The Reds great rivals Manchester United lost Cristiano Ronaldo to Real Madrid and the Spanish giants could well force their hand again with David de Gea.

Of course it’s not one-way traffic either. Even European football’s most decorated club cashed in on Angel Di Maria last summer to help balance the books as the Argentinian swapped the Bernabeu for Old Trafford.

Selling your best players on for a tidy sum has always been a fact of life of lesser clubs, but for supporters of the likes of Liverpool, brought up on a diet of success it has become a bitter pill to swallow.

However, if you are going to be forced to make a sale then the aim of the game is to wring every last penny out of the buyers and the Reds are showing they’re no mugs when it comes to this.

Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy has long been seen as the doyen in this art form having squeezed a world record 100million Euros (£85.3million) fee out of Real Madrid for Gareth Bale in 2013.

The White Hart Lane chief might have a rival over in Boston though because if ‘sicknote’ Sterling does go for the £50million fee that the Reds are demanding the Henry and company will have accrued an eye-watering total of £175million from their three most expensive sales.

An ill-wind with El Nino

In FSG’s first season at Anfield, Torres’ mid-season departure to Chelsea had Kopites up in arms that their main striker had demanded a transfer to one of their domestic rivals but their hearts were ruling their heads as pocketing £50million for a player who was past his best actually proved to be a masterstroke.

‘El Nino’ had become the fastest player in Liverpool history to net 50 goals but his game that was based on lightning bursts had by the time he moved to London been seriously hampered by knee and hamstring injuries.

Vindication has been proven by the fact that in the four-and-a-half years since he left Anfield, the now 31-year-old has scored just 24 league goals – the same total he got in his first season at the Reds.

The only major flaw for Liverpool in the whole Torres sale was that, having already just acquired Suarez from Ajax, the Reds felt the need to show a further statement of intent by splurging 70% of the Spaniard’s fee on a club record purchase of Andy Carroll for £35million from Newcastle United when they probably should have just paused for breath and a moment of reflection.

On that score, the then football rookies at FSG showed that they were still a bit wet behind the ears. The Geordie target man was subsequently deemed ill-suited to new boss Brendan Rodgers’ style of play and after being shipped out on loan to West Ham United in 2012 he was eventually sold to the Irons at a £20million loss.

Why Suarez didn’t go to The Smoke

By the time Arsenal chanced their arm over Suarez, Henry’s posse had seriously wised-up to the way football works.

The Gunners thought they were onto a winner they got wind of the Uruguayan’s £40million buyout clause at the Reds and submitted a bid of one pound more.

However, as Henry would later confess, while the caveat indeed did exist in the contract, he and his fellow Anfield chiefs just ignored it as they felt that it was not legally water-tight and they were under no obligation to do a deal.

In March 2014 Henry recalled: “He had a buy-out clause - I don’t know what degree I should go into this - but he had a buy-out clause of £40million.

“So Arsenal, one of our prime rivals this year... they offered £40million and one pound for him and triggered his buy-out clause.

“But what we’ve found over the years is that contracts don’t seem to mean a lot in England - actually not in England, in world football. It doesn’t matter how long a player’s contract is, he can decide he’s leaving.

“We sold Fernando Torres for £50million. We didn’t want to sell but we were forced to.

“For the first time (with Suarez) we took the position that we weren’t selling.

“Since apparently these contracts don’t seem to hold, we took the position we’re just not selling.”

The player subsequently stayed at Anfield a further year, penned a new contract and enjoyed the best season of his life with his 31 Premier League goals taking the Reds to within a whisker of their first title in 24 years.

When Liverpool did decide to sell – only after Suarez’s penchant for nibbling on opponents had reared its ugly head again at the World Cup finals – they were able to cushion the blow with a £75million windfall from Barcelona.

Maintaining the value of Sterling

Talking of the unsavoury takes us to the current messy situation that Sterling has brought upon himself.

The club are standing firm throughout his latest drama. Having made it clear that he did not wish to travel on Liverpool’s pre-season trip to Asia, the 20-year-old missed training after calling in ‘sick’.

Given the current situation just how ill would you have to be not to get yourself to Melwood?

If the illness is genuine then surely the club’s doctors could have assessed him and then sent him home.

Despite his obvious talents, you wonder whether the behaviour of ‘Team Sterling’ of late might even put Manchester City off.

A seemingly troubled young man who has courted controversy off the field this summer with newspaper photographs twice appearing to show him inhaling laughing gas, his actions are nevertheless refusing to raise any smiles from either the Reds hierarchy or supporters.

FSG’s message is clear though. Whatever tricks Sterling and his so-called advisors might try and pull, they value him at over £50million.

And when that latest big fat cheque comes in it will be Liverpool who again have the last laugh.

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