http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/...ret-footballer-andy-carroll#start-of-comments
Don't all rush to agree with me, but I would like to make a case for the defence of Andy Carroll.
My empathy for Liverpool's £35m striker comes from having suffered quite spectacularly in the wake of a big‑money move of my own. Admittedly there is a certain amount of morbid curiosity that accompanies watching such a public failing, but I would like to see Carroll come good, not because I have a particular affinity for him or because I am a fan of Liverpool (though I've always liked them) but because I know how utterly humiliating it can be.
That Carroll is the eighth-most expensive player in world football should not matter; transfer fees do not equate to success or in many cases, strangely, even reflect talent. Much of that huge fee was tied up in Carroll's potential – he is, after all, still only 23 – but the question is, how long can Liverpool's patience for the return of their glory days last while the confidence of the man tasked with bringing them back continues to head south?
My overriding thought after 20 games for my new club was that I was letting down everybody that had ever helped me get this far and, worse, that I could do absolutely nothing about it. There were many factors – moving to a new location, style of play, my mental state, and the list goes on – but nobody wanted to hear the reasons just as much as I didn't want to make excuses.
Above everything else, though, something that weighed very heavily on my shoulders at the time was a horrible feeling that my peers thought I was shit (you'll have to take my word for this, but that wasn't the case) and that with each game I was actually damaging my reputation. By the end I was doing a very poor impersonation of a footballer until finally the manager put me out of my misery.
"It's not really working is it mate?"
"No gaffer, I'm afraid it isn't," I said. I honestly could have cried at that point had I not tripped over a training aid that was on the floor behind me as I turned to slink away.
In many ways it's a rock and a hard place for Liverpool and Carroll but, in spite of the transfer fee, Carroll's potential and the expectations of the Liverpool supporters, there is a much bigger picture. Nobody would deny that under Dalglish Liverpool are a work in progress and he would have needed a huge amount of luck, as much as anything else, for a new attack to gel instantly. Carroll has been joined at his new club by Luis Suárez, Charlie Adam, Stewart Downing and Jordan Henderson whom, as we know, have all come under suspicion for the size of their transfer fees.
At the time I remember holding my tongue and seeing what this new lineup could do because on paper it was certainly interesting. Add to the mix Steven Gerrard, Dirk Kuyt and Craig Bellamy, and Liverpool fans could be forgiven for being optimistic, especially under King Kenny.
But clearly it isn't working out as expected. So far in 2011-12, Liverpool's new signings have 23 goals between them, with Suárez leading the way on 12, Carroll with six, Downing and Adam each on two, while Henderson has struck once.
The Liverpool fans I speak to always tell me that there is a certain style of play expected where their team is concerned and that Carroll sticks out because he isn't a typical Liverpool centre-forward. But if we retrace the path that Carroll now treads, a familiar pattern starts to emerge. Up front, only Fernando Torres can claim to have succeeded in recent times. Before him, Peter Crouch took 19 games to score his first Liverpool goal while Robbie Keane managed five goals and was eventually sold back to Tottenham after 19 games. Kuyt, bought initially as a striker from Feyenoord for £10m, also struggled to fill that same role at Anfield and decamped to the right side of midfield.
It does seem that unless a forward has been brought up in the Liverpool mould, the adjustment is just too great. Robbie Fowler and Michael Owen both succeeded after coming through the Liverpool academy but didn't exactly set the world alight after leaving.
So if Carroll doesn't fit at Liverpool then why is he there? Perhaps the club's director of football, Damien Comolli, could offer a clue. Comolli is credited with the signings, if not the discovery, of players such as Kolo Touré, Gaël Clichy, Gareth Bale and Younès Kaboul during stints at Arsenal and Tottenham respectively. But at Liverpool Comolli has relied more heavily on the so-called "Moneyball philosophy" (which, irritatingly, has also infiltrated my club), which argues, among other things, that a team that wins more than 40 headers, or crosses the ball more than 30 times or makes 12 regains in the final third, will nearly always win. This is all very well if the team is set up to play for those goals in the first place.
Whatever you really think of Carroll as a person or a footballer, there seems to be enough evidence to suggest that his start to life at Liverpool was never going to be spectacular. But with a prevailing wind, plenty of work on the training pitch and a complete overhaul of Liverpool's entire football culture and philosophy then it could yet work out. Then again, there is more chance of Kenny Dalglish admitting that he may have got something wrong.
Don't all rush to agree with me, but I would like to make a case for the defence of Andy Carroll.
My empathy for Liverpool's £35m striker comes from having suffered quite spectacularly in the wake of a big‑money move of my own. Admittedly there is a certain amount of morbid curiosity that accompanies watching such a public failing, but I would like to see Carroll come good, not because I have a particular affinity for him or because I am a fan of Liverpool (though I've always liked them) but because I know how utterly humiliating it can be.
That Carroll is the eighth-most expensive player in world football should not matter; transfer fees do not equate to success or in many cases, strangely, even reflect talent. Much of that huge fee was tied up in Carroll's potential – he is, after all, still only 23 – but the question is, how long can Liverpool's patience for the return of their glory days last while the confidence of the man tasked with bringing them back continues to head south?
My overriding thought after 20 games for my new club was that I was letting down everybody that had ever helped me get this far and, worse, that I could do absolutely nothing about it. There were many factors – moving to a new location, style of play, my mental state, and the list goes on – but nobody wanted to hear the reasons just as much as I didn't want to make excuses.
Above everything else, though, something that weighed very heavily on my shoulders at the time was a horrible feeling that my peers thought I was shit (you'll have to take my word for this, but that wasn't the case) and that with each game I was actually damaging my reputation. By the end I was doing a very poor impersonation of a footballer until finally the manager put me out of my misery.
"It's not really working is it mate?"
"No gaffer, I'm afraid it isn't," I said. I honestly could have cried at that point had I not tripped over a training aid that was on the floor behind me as I turned to slink away.
In many ways it's a rock and a hard place for Liverpool and Carroll but, in spite of the transfer fee, Carroll's potential and the expectations of the Liverpool supporters, there is a much bigger picture. Nobody would deny that under Dalglish Liverpool are a work in progress and he would have needed a huge amount of luck, as much as anything else, for a new attack to gel instantly. Carroll has been joined at his new club by Luis Suárez, Charlie Adam, Stewart Downing and Jordan Henderson whom, as we know, have all come under suspicion for the size of their transfer fees.
At the time I remember holding my tongue and seeing what this new lineup could do because on paper it was certainly interesting. Add to the mix Steven Gerrard, Dirk Kuyt and Craig Bellamy, and Liverpool fans could be forgiven for being optimistic, especially under King Kenny.
But clearly it isn't working out as expected. So far in 2011-12, Liverpool's new signings have 23 goals between them, with Suárez leading the way on 12, Carroll with six, Downing and Adam each on two, while Henderson has struck once.
The Liverpool fans I speak to always tell me that there is a certain style of play expected where their team is concerned and that Carroll sticks out because he isn't a typical Liverpool centre-forward. But if we retrace the path that Carroll now treads, a familiar pattern starts to emerge. Up front, only Fernando Torres can claim to have succeeded in recent times. Before him, Peter Crouch took 19 games to score his first Liverpool goal while Robbie Keane managed five goals and was eventually sold back to Tottenham after 19 games. Kuyt, bought initially as a striker from Feyenoord for £10m, also struggled to fill that same role at Anfield and decamped to the right side of midfield.
It does seem that unless a forward has been brought up in the Liverpool mould, the adjustment is just too great. Robbie Fowler and Michael Owen both succeeded after coming through the Liverpool academy but didn't exactly set the world alight after leaving.
So if Carroll doesn't fit at Liverpool then why is he there? Perhaps the club's director of football, Damien Comolli, could offer a clue. Comolli is credited with the signings, if not the discovery, of players such as Kolo Touré, Gaël Clichy, Gareth Bale and Younès Kaboul during stints at Arsenal and Tottenham respectively. But at Liverpool Comolli has relied more heavily on the so-called "Moneyball philosophy" (which, irritatingly, has also infiltrated my club), which argues, among other things, that a team that wins more than 40 headers, or crosses the ball more than 30 times or makes 12 regains in the final third, will nearly always win. This is all very well if the team is set up to play for those goals in the first place.
Whatever you really think of Carroll as a person or a footballer, there seems to be enough evidence to suggest that his start to life at Liverpool was never going to be spectacular. But with a prevailing wind, plenty of work on the training pitch and a complete overhaul of Liverpool's entire football culture and philosophy then it could yet work out. Then again, there is more chance of Kenny Dalglish admitting that he may have got something wrong.
