Even Messi was not up to his best level when the stakes where the highest.
This is laughable, I think you're talking about the knockout stages of the Champions League when you say this. He was pretty quiet in the first two legs against PSG and the 2nd leg at home vs Juventus. So now 3 matches is indicative of a player's performance throughout the season? This team loses Messi and it's done, at this point Suarez getting injured would be a side note, that's how bad he is.
Trash Messi when is under performs for less than a handful of games. but keep coming out of the woodwork to defend Suarez who's been a steaming pile of shit more often than not. Messi is consistently great, Suarez is consistently atrocious.
Don't worry, Messi can't bail this team out every match and there will be times this season where Suarez loses us the game by missing a shit ton of chances. Then after the season is over and we go trophy less due to playing with 10 men you'll realize what everybody has been saying for the past year and finally admit you were wrong. Stats were this guy's saving grace last season, this year he'll score less than 20 goals in total and you apologists will be left speechless.
I've never seen people defend a player after such a long run of not just poor form, but non-La Liga caliber form (more likely decline). Regardless if he is a legend or not, if a player massively under performs for a prolonged period of time they must be replaced to maintain a competitive team, just look at Real Madrid.
I've never been a huge fan of Neymar, but that guy was shit on every single week by people who went looking for flaws in his game to pick apart and analyze. Neymar at his worst last season is still multiple levels above this Suarez, yet received 10x more criticism.