In the January transfer window, Liverpool football club was involved in four player transfers, two came in and two went out, the players that went out being Ryan Babel and Fernando Torres. Whilst those that came in were Luis Suarez and Andy Carroll. That is a quite interesting considering that all transfers involved forwards.
All four transfers were big money deals, with three of them being in excess of 20 million quid. Of those three deals, one of them was a British record. The player being Andy Carroll, a young player with a lot of promise and potential. Who was scoring a lot of goals and was being given many name tags like, “the next Shearer” or “the next Drogba” (I personally don’t like these name tags, I prefer the simple tag “Wonderkid”). Andy Carroll, a tall lad who is very strong, a giant as some may say, who many have described as the very best in the air, with a thunderous left foot and he possesses speed that could fool many.
When Carroll was signed, a lot was expected of him, many people wanted to see many goals. The media started going on and on about Andy Carroll and how he is a new Shearer that is going to do big things for Liverpool FC. Many talking about how Dr King Kenny is the manager that made Shearer the player he became. And how Dr Dalglish was going repeat that with Andy Carroll.
Carroll came injured and did not play a game until March, and when he did start playing the expectations on him were not huge because he was coming from injury and because his strike partners were finding the net. The midfielders were scoring too, there was a time when Meireles was on song and later on Maxi hit a purple patch, hence the British record transfer was not under much pressure to score. He did score two goals though, one of them being a belter that had every Liverpool fan dancing and a beautiful header past the rated Citeh and England Goalie, Hart. Those goals allayed any fears we had in him and made us imagine of the great times ahead. Though at the time there was a lot of talk of how wingers that swing in crosses would bring the best out of the 35 million man.
During the summer transfer window we bought Henderson for 16 million, Downing for 20 million quid and Adam for about 8 million. All these are players that are well known for assists and had quite a sizeable number of assists last season. Downing being the player known to “whip it in” from either wing, Henderson also had many assists last term and Adam who can provide great assists from set pieces. Comolli himself said Adam can be a left sided player and SAF said his corners alone are worth 10 million. Adam has already provided one assist so far and we know that more are coming. Dr King Kenny and Comolli also brought in Enrique whose offensive play is more recognizable than his defensive play.
When you consider all the summer signings you will be forgiven for thinking that Dr King Kenny is building the team around Carroll (I have already forgiven myself). I too believe that most the signings we made after we bought Carroll were meant for us to bring the best out of Carroll: the player that is said to be unstoppable when he gets his groove on and fully fit. And if our very own Dr believes so, then who am I not to?
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Have Downing, Adam and Henderson been ordered to only create for Carroll? Otherwise I would have thought that they were at hand to create for everyone including Suarez, Kuyt, Gerrard and Downing himself. But if they’ve been ordered to only create chances for Carroll then interesting article.
LoL D Boy ,
Great reply to a shite article .
The point is that Downing, Henderson and Adam were bought to bring the best out of Carroll. Isnt it obvious that they will play football with the rest of the players in the team.
We ended up buying these players because they are known for their crossing and that gave them the edge over other possible players we could have bought. That is why we got Downing over Mata or Hazard who could have gone for the same price.
We bought in Downing Henderson Adam because they proved themselves to be the best players in their position in the League , which is the same reason we bought Carroll .
Idiots like you seem to think the same shower of money grabbing dishonest shite that finished 7’th under Rafa should be kept & in doing so will somehow win us the League !!!
Fucking Idiots .
Get it into yer head that Dalglish knows what hes doing , he knows the characters he can work with & those that need to be replaced .
Regardless if you like or trust Kenny or not nobody can say that Adding Andy Carroll , Charlie Adam , Jordan Henderson & Stewart Downing to your squad , thats any squad in the top 5 leagues in Europe , is going to weaking you in any way shape or form .
We have bought some of the very best players in the Premir League & if you knew anything about football & not computer football you would realize that .
Carroll right now isn’t good enough to build a top team around. Let’s be honest, if Liverpool didn’t pay a crazy £35m for the guy then who else was breaking down Newcastle’s door for him? He has raw potential but is not very technical or fast.
Liverpool need to concentrate on getting results and building a system to suit ALL the players we have. If that means dropping Carroll in the weeks ahead then so be it.
The difference between the danger Suarez creates for the team and Carroll is obvious to a blind man. That’s the difference between a top class player like Suarez and a player with an awful lot to learn and improve on, like Carroll.
Spurs, 25 million a couple of days before.
please dont compare suarez and carrol they are two completely different forwards you numpty.
yes.. they are completely different.. one is a world class player with great technical ability .. the other is overrated Carroll.. it will turn out to be one of the worst buys in the history of the league.. and yes I am a Liverpool fan.. but Carroll is just like every other Brit strike.. overrated crap..much like the talent that England produces in every position relative to their foreign peers!
Clueless tit .
He doesnt know the difference between pace & acceleration & thinks technique starts & ends with dribbling & its dribbling all over his keyboard he is doing instead of writing a credible football comment about a TEAM GAME .
I read so many articles everyday about Liverpool and I feel this is interesting, it’s gives a different perspective on things. Ido believe Carroll is to young to be considered the heart and soul of Liverpool football club. But maybe your right, maybe Kenny is building a team around Carroll, You have given in depth thought and a logical analysis as to how we have built the team around him. You have given great facts and as we saw against Sunderland every corner was aimed at him. With great crossers like Adam, downing and Stevie he’s guarenteed to get goals from corners.
I believe we can expect big things from Carroll because of his massive price tag and because the lad is class. A defenders absolute nightmare, don’t be surprised if Carroll ends up outscoring Luis Suarez this year, it’s very possible. He should already be on the score sheet and my belief is 20 goals will come.
This whole debate over Carroll not being good enough or the signings made since his purchase is a little tiresome, I bloody hope KK has brought players that work well together for the sake of the team, how successful this is we will wait and see, but I can tell you this compared to our 2 strikers we had at the start of last season LFC will score more goals! Our midfield has more competition of a higher class and this season the LB we have brought is way better than the guy we brought last year
Drop Carroll are you serious. I would rather have carroll over suarez anyday just my opinion, he has more options, bigger stronger, in the air and deceptive speed. Anyway glad we have both of them
That is with the assumption that Carroll will score many goals, if not, then we have wasted 79 million, where we should spend on players like Aguero, Mata, Hazard, Marin….
For my predictions, if Carroll played, we are not going to get the 4th place, we will be without Champion League for years to come.
YES YES YES When carrollwas taken of on weekend we had nothing upfront lost shape because of the link up with carroll we need one more great frontman.
carroll is simply a fool and dalglish is a xenophobe. Why leave out aquilani agains sunderland. I’d tink kk is a fool 4 putn faith in carol
I hope you are not a Liverpool fan you know it all fuck. I hope Kk and Carroll make you choke on those words
have u ever thought that maybe leaving out Aqua was meant to send a clear message that he is not part of his plan. easy man
You kidding? The new team is built around Lucas. Look all round the team. Besides Carragher, Reina and Enrique, everyone else on the squad is capable of contributing at least a goal to 20 a season, so the onus will not be on our most expensive signing to do so. Carroll provides the aerial threat we sorely missed while our defenders are defending and the kind of muscle we never had up front since Bellamy left, both are necessary options to thrive especially against teams like WBA who will park the bus.
Now as to why Lucas? While Enrique was probably our best bet seeing that Baines was unavailable, our other outfield players signed were the 3rd, 4th and 9th top chance creators in the league last season. This stat is probably less of a coincidence than that they’re British. Meireles is 14th on that list, and Gerrard has always had a high ratio in that respect too. So why do we want so many creative players from deep?
Seeing the importance of stats to our new look midfield, Lucas completed the 16th most passes in the league. If that is not already impressive for consistency, no one completed more tackles. Not even Danny Murphy who’s a better tackler by success rate. With the leagues number 1 tackler, it makes sense to have many creative options for him to get the ball to.
When Brazil invented the 4-2-3-1, the idea was that the 2 central mids – who were typically un-samba-esque, would be protecting the back 4 so the wingbacks could bomb forward. The additional role of the central mids would then be getting the ball to any of their 6 attackers(the wingbacks with speed and 4 forwards with an array of skills.)Lucas has become this type of midfielder, and as stats have shown, is the best of his ilk in England.
With Adam, Hendo and Downing, these 3 are proven(in the league) creative outlets, 3 extra options for Lucas to play the short ball to. Adam, Agger, Carra and Flanno are more than capable of the long ball, as we’ve witnessed against Sunderland. Throughout the course of the season, if we lose the ball, we’re likely to start again from either Reina or Lucas. That is to say, most balls from open play must pass through Lucas at some point. He is our chief ball winner. This also means he is the one who will mark instead of being marked.
Therefore, given Lucas’ role and stats, and the creative nature of our new boys, it does look more likely that the team is built around Lucas – a 5m man as opposed to our 35m man. It is also worth noting Carroll is on just over half of Torres wages and less than a third of Aguero’s, and based on what he’s getting, he’s as worth the money as Aguero! Aguero scored 2, Carroll scored a little over 2 thirds of a goal(went in, got ruled out, so that’s almost 1).
Good post .
You should consider sticking a title on it & emailing it to Ron to see if he will publish it for you .
We need more intelligent SUPPORTIVE posts instead of all these supposedly “Even Handed” posts which are little more than snide attacks upon the Club .
Why cant we just relaxed nd be patient a little,we all knw dt Andy is still a very very young lad who is till under learning,you are only looking at his size nd stature instead of his age nd future potentials dt he posses,just give him about one nd a half to two seasons U will surely confirm dt he is a major threat to any back four,he may even explode against against arsenal on saturday as we all knw they dont like long nd high balls tactical plays!!
I completely agree with you that the current LFC team is built around Caro, but unfortunately to the detriment of the entire club. Ever since KK realized that he had just been duped of 35m he wasted on the kid, he never stopped wasting more funds on the likes of Hendo, Downing, etc in a bid to cover his mistake of buying Carol. He suddenly resorted to long balls as against our traditional pass and move pattern which he applied very effectively last season. Henceforth he doesn’t want to set his eyes on players like Meireles, Aqua, Maxi, Kuyt etc, that are not prepared to “follow his kick and follow” pattern. KK was blinded by Carrol’s saga that he almost forgot that our defense was our worst department, and that the 16m or 20m wasted on Hendo could conveniently give us Cahil, besides Mireles, Aqua, Shelvy, Kuyt, Maxi, and even Coady are all better than thathis Henderson.
Theres only one tin i’d lyk fellow kopites to knw nd that is we nd anoda stryka… Yeah to b frank carrol does have potential to bcome a great but d fans are nt ready to wait any longa nt wen man united is nw on 19 are we going to wait 4 someone who is just going to improve nd also d kind of optimism we have concerning d playas we brot in so definitely carrol doesnt xcatly fit dat bill 4 nw, we do nd a ready made 4ward that even carrol can learn 4rm nd then improve on his game if we want to stick our neck in there this season
Yeah, a lot of goals from Carrol////////////
the difference is scoring winning goals////// No point scoring a hatric in a five nil game, and the next game is a 0-0 draw or a 0-1 defeat. Carrol is NOT a match winner, and LFC will never have the NEVER SAY DIE spirit without a matchwinner