Liverpool FC Forum

redtrader74 wrote:Spurs always throw out stories about who they might bid for, just to keep their pessimistic fans happy. Even if there was a bid, the 'sources' said it was £23m at most, but we paid £35m FFS. There wasnt any real competition for andys signature, we clearly made a panic buy and fcked up.

Dundalk wrote:Newcastle have moved on but Liverpool's Andy Carroll pines for home

LINK


It is easy to imagine Andy Carroll driving alone in his car with I'm Coming Home Newcastle booming out of the sound system. Horribly sentimental, yet strangely haunting, the old Busker song, later covered by Lindisfarne, echoes around St James' Park in the preamble to kick-off at every Newcastle United home game.

The following excerpts capture the tone of unashamedly cheesy lyrics penned for homesick Geordie exiles. "I'm coming home Newcastle, I might as well have been in jail, I'd walk the streets all day all night for a bottle of your own brown ale … I'm coming home Newcastle, if you never win the Cup again, I'll brave the dark at St James' Park on the Gallowgate End in the rain. I'm coming home Newcastle … I'll walk the streets all day all night for a bottle of the River Tyne. I wish I'd never been away. I'd kiss the ground for the welcome sound of my mother saying hinny howay."

Forget the right foot often more suited to standing on than scoring with, the sometimes wayward positional sense, the frequent lack of subtle, clever, movement and the concerns about "refuelling", arguably Carroll's biggest problem at Liverpool is that it is not Newcastle. According to reliable sources, Anfield's underachieving centre-forward spends far too much free time travelling back to his beloved Tyneside, visiting family, friends and old haunts.

Eleven months after a £35m deadline day transfer to Liverpool and a week before his 23rd birthday, the ties that bind Carroll so tightly to his Geordie roots have yet to loosen appreciably. It seems that a Newcastle team increasingly built around Yohan Cabaye's playmaking skills, a growing possession game and Demba Ba's goals have moved on much faster than their former local hero.

While Carroll has been warming Liverpool's bench – and with Fabio Capello expressing disquiet about his off-field habits, also slipping out of England contention – Ba, a devout, teetotal Muslim has established himself as the Gallowgate End's new attacking darling. On Friday night at Anfield, Ba will attempt to extend a scoring streak in which the free transfer signing from West Ham has claimed 14 goals in his past 13 Premier League games while Carroll is expected to replace the suspended Luis Suárez.

Kenny Dalglish's players may pine for the Uruguayan, but Alan Pardew's team are not about to underestimate an old friend. Fabricio Coloccini and Mike Williamson, Newcastle's likely central defensive pairing, confronted the 6ft 3in Gateshead-born force of nature often enough in training to fear the undeniable brilliance of a powerfully incisive left foot not to mention that ferociously combative aerial ability.

"At his best Andy is virtually unplayable," says Glenn Roeder, one of Carroll's former Newcastle managers. "I played him against John Terry and Sol Campbell in games with Chelsea and Portsmouth and neither could get near Andy in the air."

Roeder found Carroll consistently receptive to training ground advice but believes he needs to work hard on improving his right foot, movement outside the box, possession retention and first touch. "If I were Andy I'd get DVDs of Michael Owen, look at his game outside the area and study how he does the simple things wonderfully well," Roeder says.

If Liverpool's fluent passing style is mentally and technically more demanding of players than the broadly direct approach adopted by Newcastle during Carroll's brief period in the first XI, it would be very wrong to say he is incapable of rising to the challenge. A forward far better on the ground than generally given credit for possesses sufficient natural talent to successfully reinvent elements of his game.

Dalglish, who persistently rebutts doubts about Carroll's lifestyle, has long maintained that the thigh and knee injury which have so disrupted his first year on Merseyside represent the principal reasons for a painfully slow burn start.

Those who liken Carroll to Michael Ricketts – the former Bolton Wanderers striker who, a decade ago, briefly took Premier League defences by storm, won an England cap and then swiftly disappeared almost without trace – conveniently ignore a significant difference. While Ricketts concedes he fell out of love with football, Carroll's friends are vehement that, if a certain immaturity, homesickness and lack of match fitness have undeniably held him back, disinterest and disengagement are definitely not among the £35m man's problems.

Perhaps a sometime England international who, despite registering 11 goals in 19 appearances for Newcastle early last season, had only been playing Premier League football for five months when he was bundled into Mike Ashley's Anfield bound helicopter is as much in need of regular first-team action as decent left wing crosses from Stewart Downing.

Courtesy of the eight-game Football Association ban faced by Suárez in the wake of the Patrice Evra racial abuse case he now seems certain to be granted the former.

The vogue joke on Merseyside may be: "News Alert: FA offer Carroll eight game first team run; Liverpool set to appeal" but it could yet morph into a serenade sung to the tune of Neil Diamond "Sweet Carroll-ine."


From the Guardian

ethanr wrote:We spent £35 million pounds on AC in January.  If we would have waited until the summer then the money we would have spent on any striker would have counted towards the Fair Play rules.  So I'm thrilled we bought him when we did because we basically got another player in our squad without spending money that we have to make back.  Even if we were to end up selling him for £10 million, that's + £10 million towards our funds after FFP kicks in compared to a loss from what we would have spent over the summer.

It's our owners money.  What they spend matters now to get in the CL, but when we bought Carroll it didn't matter, and they don't seem to mind who they spend money on as long as we improve.

ethanr wrote:But with owners like these who really just want to win, it's money they spent, and I'm sure they're still glad they did it.  You think they weren't thinking about FFP when they bought Carroll?  If there was no FFP, I honestly don't believe we would have gone after another striker.  The simple fact was that we needed to get another striker then so we didn't have to pay for him when i would affect FFP.

By the way, your logic makes no sense.  We paid £35 million for him, and we took a risk.  If we would have waited and he'd gotten better or continued to score as many goals, and ended up finishing the season with over 20 goals as a 22 year old with loads of potential, his value would have shot through the roof, and we would have paid even more for him.  Kenny and co believed that he was going to be a fantastic player, so they took a risk and bought him instead of chasing a different more proven striker (who weren't being sold in January very much as spurs were going after every striker who ever scored a goal and couldn't get a club to sell one).  If he would have tanked then we wouldn't have bought him in the summer at all and would have to find a new target.  Football is about risks, especially in the transfer window.  We took a risk, and some of us refuse to give up on this 22 year old yet, especially considering players like Carroll often take time to bed into their new clubs, and are usually decently older then Carroll before they start banging in goals all the time.