The Uruguayan admits he would have been tempted to hang up his boots if he had been in the Liverpool captain’s situation, having made the crucial mistake in the title race

Luis Suarez claims he would have been tempted to retire if he had been in Steven Gerrard’s shoes after the Liverpool captain’s costly slip set Chelsea on the road to victory in last season’s crucial Premier League clash at Anfield.

The Reds were on an 11-game winning streak and needed just seven points from their final three matches to secure a first league title since 1990 when the Blues arrived on Merseyside in April.

But Gerrard lost his footing on the stroke of half-time and Demba Ba raced away to give the depleted visitors a lead they never relinquished, with Manchester City going on to claim the trophy.

And Suarez – the catalyst for Liverpool’s surprise title charge with 31 Premier League goals before making a €94 million summer move to Barcelona – admits he would have been tempted to hang up his boots in the same situation.

“If I had been in Stevie’s shoes, I don’t know if I would have been able to carry on playing,” the Uruguayan writes in his new autobiography serialised in the Guardian.

“Emotionally, it must have been very, very hard.

“In the previous weeks, so much had been said about him, the expectation had built so much, the talk had been about him leading Liverpool, his club, to a first title in over 20 years, on the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, in which his cousin had died, and then that happens.

“The captain, the former youth-teamer, the one-club man, a Scouser born and bred, and he was the unlucky one to make a crucial mistake.

“He still hadn’t won the league title. Stevie had started to believe, we all had. And now it had been virtually taken away from him and like that, with him slipping against Chelsea. 

“I’m convinced that if Chelsea had not scored like that, they would not have scored at all. And once you are a goal down against them, it’s virtually impossible.”