John Barnes on Suarez and the new season...

Despite being a huge fan of Luis Suarez’s, John thinks he should be shown the Anfield door.

“You can’t keep an unhappy player,” he proffers. “He’s not going to perform if you force him to stay, and you also run the risk of him effecting squad morale. I suspect that if he does go it will be to a Spanish club rather than Arsenal.”

He’s tipping Manchester City to win the title (“The players no longer have Roberto Mancini to blame for their underachievement. This time round I’m confident they’ll deliver) and United to suffer from the post-Fergie blues (Subconcisiously they’ll take their foot off the pedal because Sir Alex isn’t there to keep everybody pumped up).

Running a rule over the national side is his former Liverpool teammate Jason McAteer who reckons, “Ireland have a real chance of qualifying the way the team has been performing, Sweden being the key game. The media focus on Giovanni being sacked has quietened down a little bit, and that’s taken the pressure off the players because they do feel it.”

He’s still not 100% convinced about the manager though.

“I winced when Trap said, ‘We’re not good enough to beat the likes of Germany’,” Jason reflects. “Honesty isn’t always the best policy! Maybe it was lost in translation – certainly with Giovanni it can be – but you can’t be admitting defeat like that.”

Read our full season preview in the new Electric Picnic special issue of Hot Press.