Luis Suarez: Liverpool promised me a transfer if we didn't reach the Champions League

Arsenal target insists he is within his rights to move away from Anfield - and accepts the English media aren't THAT bad

Please release me: Suarez insists he had Liverpool's word he could go

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Luis Suarez has savaged Liverpool, suggesting they broke promises to allow him a summer transfer and have breached the terms of his contract.
The in-demand striker, who has been the subject of a £40m-plus bid from Arsenal, claims in an interview published tonight that he had a chance to leave the Anfield giants a year ago but was persuaded to stay for new manager Brendan Rodgers' first season.
He says Rodgers himself vowed to push through a move away from Merseyside this summer if the Reds did not qualify for the Champions League.
They did not qualify even for the lesser Europa League, finishing in seventh place.
“I want to move to play in the Champions League, and there is a club offering me that opportunity,” said the Uruguay international. “I have told the manager that I want to leave the club.
"I am being accused of showing a lack of loyalty, but last year I had the opportunity to move to a big European club and I stayed, on the understanding that if we did not qualify for the Champions League the following season then I would be allowed to go.
“I gave absolutely everything last season but it was not enough to give us a top-four finish. Now all I want is that Liverpool honour our agreement.
“Last season, we told Liverpool there was interest from a top European club but they told me, ‘We have a new coach, we are going to push for the Champions League’.
“I spoke with Brendan Rodgers several times and he told me, ‘Stay another season, and you have my word, if we don’t make it then I will personally make sure that you can leave.’
“Liverpool is a club with a reputation for doing things the right way, I just want them to abide by the promises made last season.”

Will this get Suarez his transfer?

 Arsenal are not in the Champions League itself yet - having finished fourth last season, they must make it through a play-off round later this month to reach the money-spinning group stage Suarez wants a taste of.
“I am 26, I need to be playing in the Champions League,” he continued. “I feel I have done enough to be playing in the Champions League at this stage of my career. Now there is an option for me to do that and I want very much to take it.
“I don’t feel betrayed but the club promised me something a year ago just as I promised them that I would stay and try everything possible to get us into the Champions League. "
Suarez, who has served a ban for racially abusing Manchester United defender Patrice Evra during a match and is currently suspended for BITING Chelsea's Branislav Ivanovic (he will miss the first six games of the coming season) said:
“That was the moment to show my loyalty to Liverpool and I did. They had given me my chance in England and stood up for me through my ban.
“I know I have made mistakes in my time here but I have apologised many times over. This is not about that. This is about the club having agreed to something both verbally and in the contract which they are now not honouring.
“They gave me their word a year ago and now I want them to honour that. It is not just something verbal with the coach but something that is written in the contract."

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Luis Suarez's Liverpool career in pictures

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  The striker claims his contract got rewritten to include a clause, which, as he understands it, permits him to leave Liverpool if an offer for over £40m came in.
Arsenal controversially offered £40m, plus another pound.
“I have the club’s word and we have the written contract and we are happy to take this to the Premier League for them to decide the case, but I do not want it to come to that,” added Suarez. “We have the backing of the PFA.”
Suarez claimed at the start of the summer that he wanted to leave because he was treated unfairly by the British media.

Mouth of the Mersey: Suarez's bizarre bite attack on Chelsea star

 But, The Telegraph reports, he has now changed his tune.
“I have no problem playing in England for many more years," he said. “Right now the Premier League is the biggest and most important.
"If we are just talking about the level of the football and the way the supporters are then it is an incredible league. Any player in the world at the moment would like to play in the Premier League.”
Trying to explain his attack on the media, he added, “I had just arrived in Uruguay, where the press are very good to me, because I am one of theirs. They asked me about the press in England and what am I going to say? Of course I don’t like the fact that my wife goes to the supermarket and there are photographers.
“But I realise that the press attention is the same wherever you go.”
In the lengthy piece, Suarez also said: “I don’t think the [Liverpool] supporters are angry, I think they understand a player when he has the ambition to triumph at the highest level.
“I am 26, I was a long time at Ajax without playing many games in the Champions League.  
“I’m not going to another club to hurt Liverpool. I am always going to be grateful to Liverpool for everything. But I have to put my career first. People say Liverpool deserve more from me but I have scored 50 goals in less than 100 games and now I could double the money they paid for me.
“I just ask that they respect the objectives I have in my career. I don’t want things to end badly. I just want us to come to an amicable agreement according to what was agreed.”