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Is Andy Carroll Finally Finding His Feet?

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Just ahead of Liverpool’s historic return to Wembley after nearly 16 years, let’s take a look at one particular forward who could put an end to an extremely sticky beginning to his Liverpool career.

He’s tall, sports a ponytail, wears the squad number 9 vacated by a certain Spaniard, and worn before him by greats such as Robbie Fowler. It’s the £35 million Geordie, Andy Carroll.

The big man has, by no means, had an easy start to his Anfield career. A mix of injuries and initial bad luck means Carroll’s still in a slump – well statistically at least on the game-to-goals scored ratio. With every passing game, the pressure builds up if you don’t rip the defence to pieces.

Well Carroll hasn’t yet done that and that resulted in rumours of him apparently been offered to Manchester City on a swap deal for Carlos Tevez as well as being sold back to Newcastle (for a much lesser fee of course). But throughout his struggle this season, Carroll reminds me of a former Liverpool forward whose career more or less got made under Rafa Benitez.

Remember Peter Crouch? How many games was it he went without scoring? 18 odd, at least. Then one lucky deflection against Wigan broke the duck and he didn’t look back. There were some memorable ties – like the 2006 FA Cup 1-goal win against Manchester United, a spectacular bicycle kick goal against Bolton, and that perfect hat-trick against Arsenal.

Andy Carroll has the abilities and much more than Peter Crouch to do the same, at least. Crouch developed decent ball control on the turf as well as in the air, and combined that with a good ball distribution sense and positional play.

Carroll has been showing signs of getting much better over the last few weeks, most notably against Manchester United in the FA Cup and last week against Brighton in the same competition.
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Additionally he has the body strength to deal with defenders crashing into him – in fact that’s what had him being rated by coaches across the country and his own Newcastle hero Alan Shearer, as a classic centre forward. Now he’s already shown a good understanding with both Luis Suarez and Craig Bellamy.

These two are players with pace; Bellamy more than Suarez, who relies more on sharp movement away from the defenders. Either way, with Carroll winning balls and distributing it effectively, it should only be a matter of time before he’s in full swing.

Glimpses were seen against Brighton where he sharply finished a low cross from the left wing and later cut a Jose Enrique cross back across the goal for Luis Suarez’ goal.

The worrying thing is how much his game was affected the last few months due to lack of confidence. It showed loudly when he was unable to control simple passes and messed-up basic principles of heading and ball trapping.

Then again, now he looks back on the up, the ball literally stuck to his feet when receiving a pass last week. This man needs to believe in himself more than others do.

Of course that’s easier said than done, but if he’s able to keep himself and his confidence on an upward incline, the man can do wonders.

Sunday’s Carling Cup final against Cardiff City could give him the platform to significantly seal off an end to his initial woes at Liverpool and propel him to greatness.

Given how Peter Crouch turned his fortunes around all those years ago and became a threat to defences across the country, Carroll in full flow could let all hell loose on them.

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Broadcast Journalist and Football writer.

Twitter handle @abhijan_barua

2 comments

  • Derek Byrne says:

    Some good points there Abhijan. As far as I remember crouch was afforded more patiece than carroll, a lot has to do with the fee, i dont know why a lot of his critics seem to act like he decided it! We need to keep showing faith in him as he is quite evidently a confidence player and much more goading coming his way may deprive us as his full potential

  • Tluanga says:

    carrol is an imroving player

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