carroll is a very good player, what warped peoples opinion of him was the £35m pricetag, he was worth nowhere near that amount but take that pricetag out of the equation and his career is very impressive, especially for a young target man type CF.
before he even played for newcastle he was impressing in their reserve team, for instance he once played against david weir who was playing for everton reserves and after the game weir went straight to his manager walter smith who was at the match and told him to sign carroll on the spot, newcastle turned smith down but smith was so impressed with carroll he then phoned up the scottish national manager at the time craig brown and told him to check if carroll had any scottish ancestry.
carroll broke into the newcastle team the season they went down, they started to play him at the tail end of the season when they knew they were going to have to sell the players on big wages and rely on their younger players like carroll, surprisingly he did well, although he was only 19 he bullied defenders, against teak tough stoke he really impressed, he caused havoc against a defence renowned for being physical and even scored a headed goal.
the following season he took the championship by storm, although he`d only played a handful of first team games his combative style was well suited to the hustle and bustle of the championship and he scored the goals that took newcastle back up, this was when he was 20.
the following season in the premiership he carried on where he left off, he gave everyone trouble, he scored newcastles winner at the emirates to record newcastles first win away at arsenal in donkeys years, he totally destroyed two very good and tough centre halves (skrtel and soto) when newcastle battered us at st. james park, he scored a hat trick against villa in another swashbuckling performance and his performances were so impressive they earned him his first england cap. he played in a 1-0 loss to france, he was englands best player on the day.
he had a poor start to his liverpool career but despite all the stick in the press and the stick off the fans and becoming almost a national figure of ridicule the lad has shown tremendous mental strength to battle back, he finished the season by scoring the winner in a barnstormer of a game away at blackburn, he scored the winner in the f.a cup semi final (which happened to be the biggest derby game in a quarter of a century), he scored in the f.a cup final and nearly single handedly turned the game around, he backed that performance up by again totally dominating the european champions defence at anfield and then in his only start at the euro`s scores probably one of the best headers of all time in a huge high pressure game.
he achieved all that at an age where the likes of drogba, sheringham and crouch (who all went on to play in CL finals) were practically unheard of, drogba didnt even sign his first pro contract until he was 21 and sheringham didnt rip up the lower divisions at millwall and aldershot in the way carroll did.
as target men CF`s go carroll is way ahead of the curve, he may not look the most aestheticly pleasing player on the eye but he is very, very effective, he has in his locker the ability to have even the best defences in total panic, that wont have gone unnoticed on the continent, plenty of target men centre forwards have done well in italy.
i`ve said it before and i`ll say it again, andy carroll will lead the line in our next title winning side, at 27 this lad will be unplayable.