Former Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard has revealed that it was only his intervention which prevented Luis Suarez joining Arsenal a season before the striker eventually left for Barcelona.
The Los Angeles Galaxy midfielder claims that the Uruguayan was ready to leave Anfield in 2013 after his relationship with Brendan Rodgers had broken down, and that he was close to joining the Gunners after the London club thought that they had activated his release clause with a bid of £40m.
Liverpool ultimately refused to accept the bid and Suarez eventually agreed to stay at the club for one more season, a decision which Gerrard says that he helped his teammate come to.
"Luis Suarez was training on his own in the afternoon at Melwood. Brendan's relationship with Luis had broken down," Gerrard told BT Sport. "Luis wanted to move on to play Champions League football and he had people in his ear forcing him to make moves that maybe he didn't really want to do.
"It was just a case of trying to heal that relationship with him and Brendan and get him training with the first team again and just chatting to Luis and saying to him, is it Arsenal that you really want or do you want Real Madrid or Barca?
"That was the gist of the conversation, because I knew, deep down that him and his family wanted Barcelona rather than Arsenal. For me and all the Liverpool supporters it made no sense at all him going to Arsenal because it would have made them an awful lot stronger. When you lose someone like Luis Suarez it makes you an awful lot weaker, so for me, I was prepared to do anything it took to try and make that not happen."
Suarez signed for Barcelona in 2014 for a fee thought to be in excess of £65m after scoring 82 goals in 133 games for Liverpool.
Tom Nightingale
