Liverpool owner John W Henry has admitted that there was a £40m buyout clause in Luis Suarez’s contract last summer, but the club simply refused to sell him to Arsenal.
The Gunners famously put in a bid of £40,000,001 in a bid to try and prize the Uruguayan away from Anfield but the Reds held firm and kept the 27-year-old at the club.
Henry says that the fact that “contracts don’t seem to hold” worked in their favour.
“He had a buyout clause of £40m. Arsenal, one of our prime rivals, offered £40m plus £1. What we’ve found … is that contracts don’t seem to mean a lot in England – actually, in world football,” he told the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference
“It doesn’t matter how long a player’s contract is, he can decide he’s leaving. We sold a player, Fernando Torres, for £50m, that we did not want to sell, we were forced to.
“Since apparently these contracts don’t seem to hold, we took the position that we’re just not selling.
“It’s been great for Luis, it’s been great for us. We have three gentlemen up front Suárez, (Raheem) Sterling, and (Daniel) Sturridge, (they) are young, I think those three could be together for a long time.”
