Suarez too good for Arsenal: Gerrard

LIVERPOOL — Steven Gerrard says Liverpool would have been title favourites had Luis Suarez rebuffed the advances of Barcelona.

The club captain was upset that the Uruguayan had quit Anfield, because of the potential impact on Liverpool’s Premier League challenge, but he was relieved the striker had not entertained ideas of going to an English rival, after last season’s bid by Arsenal. He said Suarez was “too good for Arsenal”.

Gerrard believes Suarez kept his promise to give the Merseyside club one more year, and it was understandable that he was lured to the Nou Camp.

“I believe if we had Luis Suarez, we’d be favourites,” said Gerrard. “I’m disappointed to see him leave but I am happy for him that he got what he wants and deserves.

“His wife is from Barcelona and I don’t think you can begrudge a player like that, who has worked so hard for his dream. You can’t go against him when he says he is leaving for Barcelona. His dream from the first day he came was to play for Real Madrid or Barcelona. 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,’” the Liverpool skipper revealed.

“I would have been really sad and disappointed to see Luis go to Arsenal. With all due respect to them, I said to him that he was too good for Arsenal. I said if you score 30 goals for us and win the PFA Player of the Year, the press Player of the Year — I knew he was going to win them — I told him Real or Barcelona will come for you.

“I have experience of the Spanish clubs and I know if you play well, they will come back. I knew they’d be back for him as well.

“I just thought, for his own sake, to get respect from Liverpool fans, he had to give us at least one year. A lot of people might still think he should have given us one more, but my big dream was to play for Liverpool and the foreign players’ big dream is to play for Real Madrid or Barcelona, that’s a fact.” THE DAILY TELEGRAPH