Liverpool and Barcelona to open transfer talks over Suarez and Sanchez

Liverpool's chief executive Ian Ayre is to meet a Barcelona delegation later today over a potential Luis Suarez transfer.

According to several newspapers reporting a similar story the negotiations with Barcelona are set to commence on Wednesday in London.

Liverpool value the player at £80M - cash that Barcelona say they do not have.  In order to cut the cost of this deal the reds want Chilean striker Alexis Sanchez in return - a player the Catalan giants are believed to value at £30M.

Rumours are rife that Sanchez would need sizeable persuasion to move to Anfield.

Luis Suarez is set to miss the next four months of football, a total of 13 games for Liverpool - 9 of which would be Premier League fixtures.

The reds remain resolute that despite his ban the player will not be allowed to leave for a cut-price.

The Spanish side are widely believed to have been behind the apology Suarez issued for his bite on Italian Giorgio Chiellini.

As Barcelona unveiled a new signing yesterday, Ivan Ratikic from Sevilla, the talk - strangely - suddenly turned to Suarez.

Andoni Zubizarreta, the sporting director at Barcelona, said:

“Suarez has shown he is humble enough to admit an error -which is very important.

“He has been humble enough to apologise to those he has affected because it happened in the middle of a festival of football. In this case it’s the best thing a person can do.

“Everyone knows that Luis is an excellent player. Everyone knows last season he played in various positions in attack, but everyone also knows that he is a Liverpool player.”

Arsenal and Juventus are also believed to be interested in Alexis Sanchez.

Sanchez has scored 47 times in 141 appearances for Barcelona.  He scored twice in this years World Cup and aged 25 he has 71 international caps.

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