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Arsenal could not activate the £40million get-out clause in Luis Suarez’s Liverpool contract this summer – because the player himself had scrapped it a year earlier, writes Tom Hopkinson in the Sunday People.

The Gunners thought Suarez was theirs when they bid a cheeky £1 above the £40m figure in August, but the Uruguayan had decided to remove the clause from his contract on the advice of his agent Pere Guardiola 12 months before.

With Liverpool failing to qualify for the Champions League, Suarez agitated for a move during the close-season, completely forgetting that the £40m escape agreement no longer existed.

The Anfield giants rejected Arsenal’s bid knowing they were on solid ground – even if the Suarez camp didn’t.

And it prompted the infamous tweet from Liverpool owner John W Henry, asking: “What do you think they’re smoking over there at Emirates?”

The get-out figure had been included in the five-and-a-half year agreement Suarez signed when he arrived from Ajax in January 2011 for £23m.

Reds bigwigs had been happy to leave it in Suarez’s contract when the two parties sat down to restructure his deal in the summer of 2012, but Guardiola decided against it.