The defender was off contract over the summer - but agreed to pen a new one-year deal after talks with manager David Moyes.
He told the Liverpool Echo: “The words that the gaffer said to me were: ‘I want you to stay and I want you to compete’. I’m not going to stay just to purely sit on the bench.
“I’m here to compete. I know he wouldn’t want to keep me, and I wouldn’t want to stay if I felt I couldn’t still play in the Premier League and I couldn’t still offer a lot to this team.
“It was a mutual decision. Obviously, if everyone was fit, I’d have expected to have started the season not playing and hoped for a chance at some point.
“Unluckily for Jarrad (Branthwaite), it’s not worked out like that for him. That’s given me the opportunity, so I just need to keep playing like I am doing and give the manager a headache when the time comes.
“I’d like to think I’ve done enough for it not to be a straightforward decision. I know Jarrad’s quality and what he brings to the team and what he brings to the club.
“I’m not naive like that. But I want to make it as difficult as I can and even if I do come out of the team, I want the manager to be looking at me for the next opportunity to get me back in.
“No matter what happens, I’ll keep giving my best and I want to keep proving that I’m good enough and that I can help this team.
“I know I’ve still got the quality to compete. Hopefully I’ve managed to show that to the manager in the first part of the season.
“Whether I stay in the team or not, I want to be playing football. Jake (O’Brien) is playing at right-back at the minute, so it gives me more of a chance to play if anything happens to anyone else.
“At the moment, I’m just focusing on playing well myself and when everyone is fit, we’ll see what happens.”