Ian Ayre on Steven Gerrard: CEO makes very interesting comments regarding captain’s contract & future

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Can we believe these quotes from Ayre…?

Club CEO Ian Ayre has given some very interesting quotes to Liverpool radio station City Talk regarding our captain Steven Gerrard…

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Strangely, Ayre thinks even if Gerrard had signed a new long-term deal with us over the summer, he’d have still wanted to leave, but has promised that the 34-year-old will always be welcomed back – potentially on loan next January.

“I’ve said openly to Steven and his representatives, as have Brendan and the owners, that we see Steven as part of the family,” he began.

“The fact that he’s leaving at the end of the season doesn’t mean it’s the last we’ll see of him at Liverpool. What that means, the details aren’t known yet, but we will keep a regular dialogue with him and I hope we will see him here again in the long term.”

“It’s conceivable. It happens a lot in MLS and it’s something we talked to Steven and his representatives about. You can’t have someone who has so much of the club’s DNA in them and just expect that it will go away.”

“Let’s assume that we’d made that offer [in the summer] and that he’d signed it. I think we’d still be in the same position today,” he added. “Just like any player, at any club, if he all of a sudden isn’t playing every week, they maybe start to think: ‘Maybe this isn’t the place for me now’.

“Steven may have signed that contract but we may have been sat round now in the same position. We’ve had that before with very senior players. I had one come to me and say: ‘I don’t really fancy this any more’.

“Who knows how it would have played out? But I think Steven made the point last week that it [not playing every week] doesn’t appeal to him. So the fact that he would have signed a contract last season actually doesn’t make any difference.

“His point was that after playing every week, playing a bit-part role is not how he wanted to finish his career. He wants to finish on a high and I am sure he will.”

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