TEN Games — we won’t argue with that.
Though, of course, if anyone else had bitten someone in the course of their work they would have been fired on the spot.
So where do Liverpool and Luis Suarez go from here?
Well, the Uruguayan is not as dumb as he looks or acts.
He’s a streetwise urchin who will use any situation to his advantage.
People within the club know that and would not be surprised if he got the hell out of it.
Just as he did after originally sinking his teeth into Otman Bakkal’s neck when with Ajax... to Liverpool’s great advantage.
Now history could well repeat itself, since a move is certainly his best option.
For a start — and this would have still been the case had the incident with Chelsea’s Branislav Ivanovic at Anfield on Sunday never taken place — the 26-year-old knows he is wasting the best years of his career at Anfield.
He is far too good for a club that looks as far away from regaining the glory years as ever.
Sure, they won the League Cup last season — but that only brackets them with Birmingham and Swansea.
In the league, they are little more than an irrelevance. They aren’t even top dog on Merseyside.
What is damaging Suarez more than anything is his, and Liverpool’s, absence from the Champions League.
This must be a monumental blow to the status of a player who, after his 30 goals for Liverpool this season, is regarded in some circles as the third-best footballer in the world behind Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo.
All season long he must have been making covetous glances towards Manchester, London and the Continent when Champions League time came round.
Instead, he has to survive on an insipid diet of bread-and-water trips to places like Southampton, Reading, Wigan, Norwich, Stoke and QPR.
Doesn’t exactly get the juices flowing when you compare it with the Allianz, Bernabeu and Nou Camp.
This is just one reason why he must leave Anfield and take advantage of the huge interest in him from Europe’s top clubs.
Barcelona certainly look as if they could do with his, er, bite up front.
Another reason for him not hanging around is his pariah-like status in this country.
Ridiculed everywhere, Suarez finds himself ranked somewhere between Hannibal Lecter and Dracula in the public perception. Yes, there is an amusing side to it all because of its sheer outrageousness. But the bottom line remains one of utmost gravity.
Can you imagine the reception he will get away from home? Can you imagine what it will be like next season at Old Trafford and Stamford Bridge? Upton Park and Stoke’s Britannia Stadium should be fun as well.
Yes, Suarez has bought it all on himself. But does he really feel like baring his soul and his back for a public flogging?
Is he so contrite he is ready for the stocks and ducking-stool? You very much doubt it. Suarez says he never reads newspapers — well, he should now. Because the front-page headlines will give him every excuse he needs for the taxi to John Lennon Airport.
As his fellow countryman Gus Poyet said this week: “Do you want him in England? Yes or no?
“If everybody is against him, he will leave. If it was down to me, I would take him somewhere else — to any other country.”
Even without this latest battery of negative publicity, it was always debatable whether he would remain at Anfield. It was a forest fire of conjecture, with Suarez himself fanning the flames.
One minute he said he was going, the next he was staying. One day, Bayern Munich were in for him, the next it was Manchester City. And Barcelona and Real Madrid the day after that. Yes, any club that does sign him will have to wait until October before he is free of suspension.
Then, again, Liverpool waited until February 2 in the 2010-11 season before Suarez made his first appearance after signing him for £24million from Ajax in the January transfer window.
Obviously, Suarez comes out of all of this pretty poorly. But then so do Liverpool. Their reasons for contesting the FA’s claim that a three-match ban was not enough were risible.
That the whole affair had been mitigated by the player’s public apology? So f****** what?
And that Suarez had agreed to work on his anger management with Liverpool’s resident psychiatrist Steve Peters.
Which begs one enormous question — why the hell wasn’t Peters used before?
No, Liverpool have once again been exposed as totally out of touch with the modern world.
OK, they might have emerged from their Seventies-style response to Suarez’s racial abuse of Patrice Evra but they still appear stuck in the Eighties.
Why on earth they failed to seize the initiative and assumed some sort of moral high ground by at least banning him until the end of the season beggars belief.
So, now what?
If, as I said, Suarez and his agents have their wits about them, they will issue a two-word statement...
Adios, amigos.
