Before the Liverpool fans start to bite my head off after reading the title of this post, please allow me to firstly let you know that I am also a Liverpool fan writing this post and all I am simply doing is airing my opinion to you and interested to hear your thoughts:
In January, we lost Torres to Chelsea as he wanted to leave. Good riddance to Torres as any player who does not want to play for Liverpool should be sold. So I have no problem at all in us selling Liverpool and it was great that we received £50million pounds for him from Chelsea. Yes, we were under pressure to reinvest that money we got for Torres to get a replacement striker and Torres did not help us at all in that by his deal only going on on the final day of the transfer window, thus giving us very little time to sign a replacement.
So in what I term a panic buy, Liverpool ‘had to’ go out and buy someone. I use the word ‘had to’ very lightly as I do not believe we had to buy someone especially under the timing pressure we had. In all fairness, we were already having a bad season and all we aimed for was for Dalglish to just steer us to safety with the squad we had for the rest of the season and then we rebuild this summer. If we had hung onto that £35million we spent on Carroll until the summer we would be in a better position to buy someone better than Carroll or even get Carroll at a lower fee this summer as Newcastle knew we had the cash and we were desperate so they inflated his price. There is no way Carroll was worth £35million.
Coupled to that, Carroll was signed injured. Should we not have learnt from this mistake from signing Aquilani? But then again, FSG wanted to stamp their authority and show us the fans that they mean business and thus they spent the £35million on Carroll. What a waste of money in my opinion.
Yes, there was a possibility that Carroll could have done a Suarez and burst onto the scene and been a brilliant player, those are some of the gambles you take when signing a new player. But Carroll has not really set the Liverpool scene alight since he signed. Carroll has featured 9 times for Liverpool since he signed and has scored two goals. There is no doubt that Carroll has struggled with injuries and that has limited his ability this season.
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Of course he is not worth 35 mil, it was just a cost inflation. Nonetheless as he is a Liverpool player and a good one so we have to give him our backing.
the phrase “square peg in a round hole” seems to fit carroll. the facts are maxi,suarez and kuyt or raul,suarez and kuyt seem to fit so much better. lets hope kenny does his stuff in the summer and gets them all to build an understanding otherwise we will have a very expensive mistake on our hands
As Dalglish said, Carroll was bought to play for LFC for five years not for five months. He will be banging goals in long after Kuyt and Maxi have been booted out (hopefully sooner rather than later!), and as such we need to focus on the future, not players that had a couple of good games in the midst of their mediocre seasons.
did we all back konchesky and poulsen i dont think we did.
defo wasn’t worth 35mil (not many players can justify that price tag) but given a proper pre season and a squad full of fresh and rejuvenated players and under the guidance of a manager the calibre of Dalglish, i believe the andy will begin to flourish, given good service and once he fully understands how we play he should be good for 25-30 goals a season
25-30 goals. You’re dreaming
Was Torres worth th £50m we got for him?
If we’d have hung onto him until the summer, with the form he was in do you really think that we would have got £50m for him – no chance!
Spot on Redrag – another other factor that the author and most seem to forget is that yes, we did ‘have to’ spend the money immediately. Any expenditure up to the end off January was immediately written off (which is why I hoped we’d splurge and at least bring in Nzogbia or Elia in January too), whereas if we had held onto that £35m until the summer, we’d have been penalised by having to balance that out elsewhere to satisfy the new financial fair play rulings.
Carroll may never prove himself to be a £35m player, but he is easily worth £15m+Torres 2.0 and will almost definitely be a major asset to LFC in the future
most responses say it all, forget bout the price tag and look to future, esp if we get few more class players, the price may blend in, yes i would have spent less and bought a fit striker but the signings gave us a lift and with fitness on his side he will flourish.
Aboslutely not. He was a one off panic buy. However, he is someone who will make our attack more dynamic. A trickster like Suarez, a battering ram like Carroll and someone pacy (??) will make us very formidable. To be fair to the lad, he’s had a bad run with injuries off late. A good pre-season under his belt and he’ll be fine next season.
Fair points from everyone – my answer to the article ‘NO’ not worth 35mil – maybe 10 / 15.
Having said that – AC had his first season in the PL after getting promoted from Championship, did well for NUFC before injury. If anyone watched him in the big games he was causing all sorts of problems for the big teams – look at the NUC Arsenal game !
He is still young and very hungry, KK has seen something in AC that he can bring to LFC in matches that require a physical presence up front and i think he will work out in the long run. Afterall – has this not been the problem with LFC getting goals against lesser teams in the past?
KK – YNWA
not 35 milion is alot of money i wishe we cold waite and get benzima a love this guy or ageuro or falcoe i just dont anderstand whey you make english players look so good weii they are shite just like joe cole i never like him and look what his done to my team you guys make him look like messi want we got him i wishe beside steward downing and everton left back i dont want to see no english player for liverpool eny more
Doe anyone actually believe that people like you are still flogging this ’35 mn worth transfer’ horse? Get over it…. since the time Carroll has been signed, I have heard nobody defend that transfer! Everybody knows that NU squeezed the 35mn out of us, considering they knew we had got 50mn for prettyboy. As far as you point goes about not signing him, let’s condsider an alternative scene. Only Suarez is signed, Torres is gone, and that means Suarez hasn’t got the partner he was bought to partner with. Nobody knew then how Suarez would adapt in the initial few months, or that Kuyt would rediscover his scoring touch along with Maxi! So effectively, then it was a a case of a new forward & existing misfiring forwards.It takes foresight to plan for a contingency, something which you lack and Kenny has in plenty!Please write a proper piece, something which concerns the immediate future and don’t bring up things already established!
Nice one RoyK!
Roy, you have it back fron front.
We effectively charged charged Chelsea what Newcastle demanded for Carrol on top of the £15m we wanted to complete the Suarez signing (with the remainder already in from Babel).
NESV made it very clear afterwards that the price for Torres was set by the price for Carrol, not the other way around.
He was worth whatever he cost at the time and it really doesn’t matter how much that was. Currently the only point any of us can even attempt a complaint about it will be at the end of this window. If at the end of this window we can look back and announce with confidence that we didn’t get everyone we needed that was available to us, and the reason is we ran out of money. Then and only then can we even begin to pick holes in our spending policy, with any real evidence to make a point valid. What is too much money for something is completely abstract dependant on who spent it, just look at Chelsea City and Madrid, and non of us yet know what we now represent financially speaking do we. (not that I am suggesting we are in thief bracket)
truth is we wont know for two reasons.
He was obviously bought on potential and if they can reign in his partying he’ll be a huge player in every sense.
Secondly we have no idea how wealthy NESN really are, so 35m might be a drop in the ocean, money ultimately doesn’t matter if you get the players you want.
AC is not worth the 35mill we paid for him…now. But for a big 21yr old English striker like him it won’t be difficult for us to ask that price for him in 4 yrs when he’s only 25. He has one great season for Liverpool and his value jumps to 40 mill. So I think it’s a calculated gamble that Kenny has taken, and who am I to question his decisions.
Carroll is not worth 35m; neither was Torres worth 50m at the time. Both were injured! It was panic buy on both sides so it wasn’t as if we were out of pocket in this deal. Let us wait for Carroll to get fully fit before passing judgement. The extra 15m from the Torres deal spent on Suarez was worth every penny. We may have had the best of Torres years like we did with Owen before that mean creature left.
Everything is worth what it’s purchaser will pay for it.
The fact that you also feel signing Aquilani was a mistake, does diminish your argument. We all know Aquilani is a top class player, and he was playing well at the end of the 09/10 season. The fact that Woy made one of his massive, stupid mistakes, by letting him go out on loan, does not make the signing of Aqua-man a mistake. The same with Carrol, Yes he was injured, so that means he hasn’t had that much time to settle in yet. So quite how you can throw your arms up and state he’s a waste of money is laughable. When Kenny buys a worthwhile Winger or two, I am confident you will be eating your words.
I see Carroll as the new Toshack. But where would Toshack have been without Jimmy Case and Ian Callaghan? If you employ a target man, you have to give him supply lines, and this season we didn’t have those supply lines.
Bottom line is, he’s young, he’s English, strong and willing, and those traits are worth the money
I think it would be difficult to find anyone who would agree that he is worth £35M. If there is someone I would like to read the reasons for this but that is incidental. We have him and it is true that he has hardly set the place afire. To be blunt I do not think that he will ever do that as I see him as a good player but nowhere near a brilliant one. He needs to be disciplined and a deal of work will need doing to mold him into a regular team performance. Even then I do have my doubts…sorry to say.
I think with some decent true wingers coming in things will change also Carroll will be fitter next season.
The 35 mill they talk about in my mind no player is worth that but that is the madness that is football.
yes andy carroll and his bank manager. look suarez is better than torres so andy is a bonus. use him in the right way and he will win us loads of games – all it requires is him and his teamates using the space between their ears. on the chest with his back to goal , on his head or rather in front of his head facing goal for starters.
oh and he needs to get more physical, especially at home were he wont be penalised as much.