4 Dec 2011

DEFENDER: "Only Dalglish, Ferguson and Wenger could get away with that..."

When Liverpool signed Andy Carroll for £35m, I'm sure the expectation amongst many fans was that he would be starting most games for the club. It hasn't worked out that way, and the former Newcastle man is spending more and more time on the bench.

Most managers would receive major flack for keeping the most expensive British player of all time on the bench, and many would (probably) be fearful of invoking the ire of the board, which would obviously want to see some return on investment.

However, none of this seems to faze Liverpool manager Kenny Dalglish, and Wimbledon legend Robbie Earle believes that only he and a couple of other elite managers could get away with continually benching such an expensive player. He told ESPN:

"There's not too many other managers - maybe Sir Alex or Arsene Wenger - who could get away with that [regularly benching Carroll], but Kenny can due to his position at the club, and the way he's held in such regard".

It's a double-edged sword for Dalglish in many ways: the more he keeps Carroll on the bench, the more it looks like a tacit admission that he made a very expensive mistake signing him.

Overall, the former Crazy Gang member is confident that Kenny is handling Carroll the right way:

"Kenny's doing the right thing in bringing Carroll off the bench; hasn't done enough yet to start [regularly] in the team, and when he has, he hasn't scored enough goals and delivered the goods enough to stay in the team.

Despite his support for Dalglish, Earle concluded:

"At the moment, it's not looking like money well spent"

I think most fans would agree with that, but hopefully six months from now, the reverse will be true.

Jaimie Kanwar


31 comments:

  1. Jamie. Please remember andy is only 22. younger than jay spearing! Strikers of hes style normally peak later than others as its mainly a role that needs experience rather than pure raw ability.
    Kenny said himself that both he and jordan henderson are very much signings for the next five years not just for the current one.
    At least wait until he has finished the season.
    Why do you always have to be so negative for no real reason.

    ReplyDelete
  2. He really wasn't "the most expensive" for in reality he bought in an agreement of a price being set for another player and that simply led to the amount paid. He was NEVER valued at £35M at all!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Did you not read the last line of the article, which is obviously POSITIVE? No.  Stop moaning about negativity and try and be a little objective for a change. 

    If your idea of being a fan is always looking on the bright side and burying your head in the sand then that's your choice, but stop trying to force everyone else to do the same.

     If you can't hack realism and truth then don't come to this site.  

    ReplyDelete
  4. Semantics.  35m passed from Liverpool to Newcastle for Andy Carroll, thus Carroll is the most expensive player in UK history.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Nothing wrong in paying 35 milliom pounds for Andy Caroll. What about paying 3o mil for Robbie Keane and previously 10 million for Diouff 9 years ago, to name but a few.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Well for all we know 35m is a value from the press. Perhaps, Jamie can reconfirm that amount once LFC annual reports are audited. I think 35m is probably an inflated number that Newcastle wanted the fans to know (perhaps there are add-ons). Like Torres, it's not really a full 50m - there are add-ons.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Carroll does not suit the LFC type of play. He may be a good striker at another club but not here. Remember he was on form Newcastle, but when he came to us he looked like a kid running after a ball.

    That money could have been used to buy a forward to aid Suarez. At the moment he gets in Luis's way.

    Pass, move, pace, vision and clinical finishing is what we need in a player.

    YNWA

    ReplyDelete
  8. Andy isnt Wayne Harrrison, an expensive teenage punt.At 35 mill or whatever you HAVE to be the finished article

    ReplyDelete
  9. He cost £35m of Chelsea's money. If he returns some of that fee it will be great. If he doesn't then he'll be sold and any money ploughed back into the club.
    He shouldn't be judged against similarly priced players as his deal was unique. He wasn't valued by Liverpool as worth £35m, simply a cost against money coming in from Chelsea which needed using.

    ReplyDelete
  10. It's nonsense to judge AC on his price tag. It was all dependent on the Torres deal. You can't play a £50M quid cheque up front. Carroll will come good. I've no doubt about it and a lot of people will be left looking very foolish.

    ReplyDelete
  11. In my opinion he is young, and if he turns out to be not so great well so be it... but for now lets just give him a chance... he was good for newcastle, definitely not worth 35 and I am sure the club knows that... Many clubs have bought expensive flops, we will not be the 1st nor the last... so give this story a break, we will keep on talking about it, until he truly becomes a flop and we say, well we told you so... Back of the kid, its not our money after all... lets just hope we just get a pacy finishing striker and we should be ok...

    ReplyDelete
  12. Errr.. Most expensive player in UK history would be Torres.. But Caroll definitely is the most expensive Brit player in UK history.. 

    ReplyDelete
  13. That's what I stated in the article, so obviously I mean that in my comment.

    ReplyDelete
  14. i find the system flawed when valuing the players like that. it doesnt account the difference in present value of money.

    it was reported here in germany that kenny went in for mario gomez but bayern wouldnt sell for that price. 

    Gomez and carroll are very similar players. but caroll is still raw. its gonna take him time to develop. it took gomez about 18 months after leaving stuttgart to elevate his game to match and then surpass his old form at bayern.

    i think carroll can become this big man up front as an option like gomez or drogba that we have needed for a while in the squad. 

    we paid a lot but we had to invest at the time and im glad we did, because losing torres at that moment and then being told we signed caroll showed that the owners were determined not to let the fans hope fade.nevertheless, you right, its a handful of managers who have the power to bench so much $ in england and not be taken to task. Rafa was slaughtered for introducing aqua gradually and we have never heard the end of robbie kean, hire purchase agreement ;)Caroll and downing need to man up, caroll needs to be much quicker and start looking to play short one touch football and not dwell on the ball in the middle of the park like he is want to do. another thing is why the hell is he not faster. he used to be. try even compare him to martin kelly for speed. there is just no comparison. and i think kelly may be taller!anyway, i still have a good feeling about downing and carrol. we will find out soon enough. 

    ReplyDelete
  15. but torres wasnt a youth product. he did cost us cash. it was 26 mill if i recall. 

    ReplyDelete
  16. Wrong he did not cost 26 million

    ReplyDelete
  17. Why do people always have to have a whiping boy leave the lad alone . I have not seen one decent cross put in for him yet .

    ReplyDelete
  18. The more I think of 35 mil the more I want to think about what other player that kind of money could buy. I am trying to fool my self by saying Carroll cost around 10 mil because of his form atm. Torres was bought for around 22mil and sold for 50 mil. That is a profit of 28 mil. You could say that around 10 mil was actually spent out of the pocket where as the rest was just from sales profit. 

    ReplyDelete
  19. Cost is one thing, ability to make the difference right now is another. Carroll is only as good now as Lucas was at his age! If he can't get a regular game by the time he's 24, then he has indeed flopped. Heskey got alot of goals for us, and I believe Carroll is better than Heskey!

    ReplyDelete
  20. I like to think we swapped Torres and babel for Suarez and Carrol. I'm happy with that.

    ReplyDelete
  21. There should be no doubt about it, 35mil for a prospect player is no small money. I just read some articles talking about the way football clubs in UK are being run. Let hope Liverpool can stay debt-free for a long time to come. It can only be achieved with astute business decisions, particularly in transfer fee and wage.

    ReplyDelete
  22. The flaw in the analysis is a very basic one of sampling. The top teams have the best players, therefore are much more likely to bench expensive players. Saying that there is something inherent in their name that makes them more impervious to criticism (in the way stated) may have an element of truth but is overstated, being one of only several factors, the most important being that top teams have more competition for places.With lesser teams, the argument does not even arise as they would be playing.

    ReplyDelete
  23. 1.) Liverpool is not top-team enough to bench a 35 million striker.
    2.) Carroll is 22. Compare it to what the likes of Balotelli are doing and what Rooney was at that age.
    3.) Its not Carroll's fault that he is 35 mill. It was a stupid transaction. He is bearing the brunt for it.
    4.) Remember Berbatov is still labelled a flop despite being joint top scorer. He's had a good career but the tag still sticks to him. Andy is a young guy.He still has a long way to go.
    5.) Yakubu scored 4 in a match. Is a similar beast of a striker. How much could have Everton jacked up his price knowing Torres was on sale, just a hypothetical question, not that you would go for him. There were better deals on offer. It wasn't like chelsea said - Buy Carroll otherwise forget bout the Torress money.

    ReplyDelete
  24. King Kenny's biasness towards English players is killing his reputation slowly but surely.He could have played Bellamy,Maxi and Kuyt for free and got better return than wasting 70 million on Carrol,Henderson and Downing.That 70 million could have been used to bid for Matta,Hazard and Lucas who are real talents at such young age.We all know English players are way overrated and underperforming and Wenger learned his lesson when he bought Jefferson from Everton.I dont think even Rafa would have made this kind of huge mistake.If I were the owner I wont trust Kenny with my money anymore and he blew it.

    ReplyDelete
  25. it was 20 mill for robbie keane, not 30

    ReplyDelete
  26. exactly - in fact Gomez was available and almost joined us last year too, before Bayern unfortunately decided to change their minds, stick with him and watch him bang in the goals every week.

    Unfortunately we've paid too much for Carroll too early in his career, but he is by no means anywhere close to his peak at presesnt.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Vilas Boas is regularly leaving a £50m striker on the bench though.
    Plus the £18m Lukaku...

    ReplyDelete
  28. The fact of the matter is, football is a results business, both club wise and player wise. So that is how Andy will be judged I'm afraid, when we signed I thought that we got a really player but the price tag was not convincing at all. With 35 mill we could of, surely, bough someone else.

    Carrol is not a 20+ a season striker.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Let's keep our fingers crossed for AC. Let's hope he can start playing for Liverpool on a regular basis, scoring goals is simply something after that. I really think players in the present Liverpool squad are good enough to play regularly, Maxi, DK, Jay Spearing, Martin Kelly & John Flanagan. Also let's hope KD makes better transfer decisions during Jan & summer. 50 plus millions on prospects players are clearly not in Liverpool's capacity at the moment. We do not have Middle Eastern and Russian oil fields as backups. Quoting scenario in Chelsea is not comparing an apple to an apple. By saying AC is young with tremendous potential and not a waste of money to be benched and kudos to KD's transfer decisions are in some serious form of self-denial.

    Anyway, just wondering if anybody knows the owners are planning for a new stadium?

    ReplyDelete
  30. Newcastle wanted to keep andy carroll so they asked for silly money and we called there bluff. There are very few 22 year olds that are valued at 35mill, and those that are very really play as good as the price tag suggest. Benzima at real comes to mind. He is know performing after a bad start. Carroll will come good given time. He is not a 35mill player, like torres, in his hay day with us, still was not worth 50mill.

    I'm getting sick of people trying to justify price tags. we wanted 50mill for Torres, chelsea where willing to pay that. Newcastle wanted 35mill for carroll, we where willing to pay that.  

    ReplyDelete