After a long running pursuit, Liverpool's attempt to sign Yehven Konoplyanka in the transfer window of January 2014 collapsed on deadline day. 

While many suspected the reason for the failure lay at the door of some of the higher ups at Liverpool, or indeed the matter of there being some interest from Tottenham Hotspur also, the player himself revealed the reason why it never came to pass.

Konoplyanka stated that the technical level in the Premier League simply wasn't up to scratch, and he chose not to make the move: "If I was two-and-a-half metres tall and didn’t know how to control a ball then I may have gone to England, but here [in Spain], the football’s more technical. It’s the best".

He added that he had no regrets about the choice that he made, and that he did have a couple of options at the time: "Some came from the Premier League and Sevilla and Atlético from Spain, but I kept thinking that Sevilla were right for me".

Via The Guardian