Liverpool's former managing director Christian Purslow believes Luis Suarez’s agent is to blame for the striker’s failure to secure a move to Arsenal.

The club’s owner John W Henry insisted today that Suarez is not for sale as the 26-year-old striker was made to train with the reserves.

As Standard Sport reported on Wednesday, the Gunners believed their £40,000,001 offer would activate a release clause but the Professional Footballers’ Association have since backed Liverpool’s interpretation of that bid as merely a starting point for negotiation.

Purslow, who helped facilitate Fenway Sports Group’s purchase of Liverpool two years ago, said: “What’s unusual about this case is there seems to be significant confusion between the player and the club as to whether he did or didn’t have such an escape clause. Yesterday it became clear that he did not have a clause, so I suspect he’s pretty unhappy with his agent who got that wrong a year ago.

“I also suspect Arsenal are unhappy because they’re a club who do their business extremely properly and professionally and they will have been made aware by intermediaries acting for the player that he thought such a clause existed.

“They will have done the right thing which is make a written offer to Liverpool. They may have spent a lot of time thinking if they were to make an offer at that level they would be securing a player. This is not something one does on a whim. I suspect Arsenal have been planning Luis Suarez as their main signing for some time and to discover such a clause is not valid and doesn’t work runs the risk of seriously wasting their time as well.”

Suarez could yet ask the Premier League to formally adjudicate on the situation and in an interview earlier this week he threatened to submit a written transfer request should he not be granted a move to a Champions League club.

The Uruguayan, whose agent is Pere Guardiola - brother of Bayern Munich manager Pep - was this week branded 'disrespectful' by Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers.

Henry, meanwhile, today told Suarez’s suitors to forget about signing him, although he made a similar claim regarding Fernando Torres three months before selling him to Chelsea in 2010.

“He won’t be sold even if a foreign club come in because we do not have time to sign a suitable replacement,” he said.