Suarez was too good for Arsenal- Steven Gerrard

Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard has confessed that he convinced former team-mate Luis Suarez to not join Arsenal last season, stating that the striker was ‘too good’ for a club like Arsenal.

Luis Suarez was embroiled in a tumultuous summer last year as he wanted to leave Liverpool for Arsenal but was eventually declined such a move by manager Brendan Rodgers. Captain Steven Gerrard has now come out in the open and has spoken about the striker’s move to Barcelona and admitted that he did not hold that against the Uruguayan.
“His dream all along from the first day he came was to play for Real Madrid or Barcelona.”

Gerrard admitted that it was him who spoke to Suarez last summer and convinced him that he was ‘too good’ for Arsenal.
“Last summer when he was out in the cold and training on his own that’s the conversation I had with him. I said, ‘Don’t go to Arsenal’. With all due respect to them, I said to him that he was too good for Arsenal.”

The Liverpool captain revealed that it was always Suarez’s dream to play for either Barcelona or Real Madrid and that he convinced him to stay at Liverpool and perform well in order to entice them to sign him next summer.

“I said, ‘If you score 30 goals for us and win the PFA Player of the Year, the press Player of the Year, they (Barca and Madrid) will come back for you’.”

Gerrard himself was wanted by most European power-houses and advised Suarez to concentrate on playing for Liverpool and earning the respect of the fans.

“I have experience of those clubs myself and I know if you play well they will come back and come back. So I knew they’d be back for him as well.”

“I just thought for his own sake, and to get respect off the Liverpool fans, he had to give us at least one year.”