Barclay's Premier League '14-'15 discussion V6

Exclusive Rory Smith meets Andy Carroll, who returns to Anfield today for the first time since the Liverpool manager sold him to West Ham Andy Carroll does not miss a beat. He has been asked to provide an illustration of how he knew, in the summer of 2012, that his Liverpool career was over, to describe precisely what it was that convinced him he and Brendan Rodgers could never work together. Straightaway, he accuses the Liverpool manager of lying.
“With Brendan Rodgers, there was a lot going on,” he says. From experience, it is safe to say that as an interviewee, Carroll does not do artifice and he does not do euphemism. He is markedly calm and casual as he describes his dark, final days at Liverpool. “What he was saying to me and what was actually happening [were different things]. He was telling me one thing to my face, then I’d leave the training ground and he would ring me and tell me a completely different thing.
“He would say: ‘You’re going to play every week, you’re going to play every game up front with [Luis] Suárez’. I’d leave and get home and he would ring me and say: ‘Fulham and West Ham want you and I think it’s best you should go.’ I had just had a conversation with him ten minutes ago. So I would go back and see him and he would say the opposite again.
“It was the same thing round and round and round. On phone calls, it was: ‘I think you should go.’ To my face it was: ‘You’ll start every week’. It was mixed messages. He was messing with my head. I lost respect for him, to be honest.
“Another example: I went to Hearts for the [Europa League qualifier]. I got up there. He said I was starting. I woke up in the morning and he came in and said: ‘I think you’ve got a hamstring problem, you’re not going to start.’ I said my hamstring was fine. He said I’d be on the bench. I got to the ground and I wasn’t even on the bench. I was the only one missing out.
“It was just messing me about. I was angry. I knew it was time to go. I thought I just want to play football. I didn’t need this. Under Brendan I knew I was never going to play, with what he was saying to me. “If he had said straightaway I wasn’t going to play, I’d have said fair enough, you’re a new manager, it’s your decision. You didn’t sign me, fair enough. He did it to a few other players, too, players who are not there now. I didn’t need to speak to anyone about it. I just knew it was a breakdown. If the manager is treating me like this, [I thought] there is no reason for me to be at Liverpool.”
Two and a half years on, Carroll returns to Anfield this afternoon as a West Ham player. Thanks to a combination of injuries and the terms of his initial loan move to Upton Park, it will be the first time he has been back to the club who, in 2011, made him the most expensive English player in history.
The accusations regarding his treatment by Rodgers have not been substantiated by the Northern Irishman. For Carroll, enough water has passed under the bridge for the 26-year-old to recount his dealings with his former manager with no real rancour. There is similarly no trace of bitterness in his voice as he discusses his feelings towards Liverpool as a whole. He is at his happiest now, he says, working under Sam Allardyce for a West Ham team he feels “is only going up”. He is over his injuries. He is allowing his thoughts, just a little, to drift towards further international recognition. Carroll is in a good place. He does not give the impression, particularly, that he would join the modern fad of refraining from celebrating should he score against his former employers, but equally does not seem to have a burning desire for revenge. Returning to Liverpool, he says, is not the emotional drain that going back to Newcastle for the first time was.
“That was tough,” he says. “I grew up there, I had a season ticket there, I supported them for years and still do now. It was hard to hear your own fans getting on your back. I knew I would get some from the Newcastle fans. That was disappointing. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong, but obviously it’s something. There are some emotions with Liverpool, but it is not a team I grew up with. It was just a team I was at for a short time and I have moved on.”
His prime emotion when he thinks back to his time at Anfield, he says, is “more frustration than regret”. It may surprise him that there will be plenty in attendance today who share that view, and not simply because of the chronic shyness in front of goal of Rodgers’ side. Carroll’s debut was a long time in coming. He had signed — on that bizarre night when Fernando Torres went to Chelsea — with an injury, and it was not until early March that he was ready to appear. The intervening weeks had brought about a torrent of bafflement and mirth that the club’s American owners had sanctioned such a vast outlay on such a raw talent.
He first appeared as a substitute during a game against Manchester United. It was the perfect setting, really. Dirk Kuyt had scored a hat-trick but Suárez had been the star, teeing up all three, tormenting the hated enemy. The game was won. The mood was buoyant. Anfield was crowing. Then Carroll, the £35 million man, bounded on to the field. His first involvement was to contest a header from a Pepe Reina goal kick. He won it, emphatically. The sight was cheered as loudly as a goal.
“I can remember coming on and winning my first header,” he says. “The noise all kicked off. But I never really got a grip on being fit. The frustration is that I could not get myself going. I went there injured, I was rushing myself back to be fit because I wanted to play and they were rushing me back, too. That meant I would play one game, then miss two, then play another and so on. Then I’d be out and it was a snowball effect.”
Then, of course, out went Kenny Dalglish — who referred to him, affectionately, as “Big Andy” — and in came Rodgers, very much a Carroll-sceptic. The Northern Irishman’s belief, it seemed, was that his powerhouse centre forward suited only one type of game. He was a target man, a long-ball magnet, a heavyweight in a bantam world. Rodgers decided that his face did not fit.
This is the only point where Carroll, reclining in his seat at West Ham’s training ground, grows agitated. He has heard this accusation too many times and, though he insists that he is “not bothered by other people’s opinions,” it clearly strikes a nerve. Not least, perhaps, because it haunts him even now.
When Sam Allardyce’s side started the season playing quick, incisive football with Diafra Sakho and Enner Valencia up front — thanks to Carroll’s injury — there was a worry around Upton Park that, once the striker returned, all that progress would be lost, that West Ham would revert to a less sophisticated style.
“We play in exactly the same way,” Carroll says. “I know we do, because the training is exactly the same, the way we set up. It is just perception. Because I am tall and win headers, people think the long ball must be back. We have probably hit the same amount of long balls with me up front as with anyone else. It doesn’t annoy me. It is just stupid. It is people not knowing the game.
“It has to be [scoring] a flying header that gives me most pleasure, but I am not just about that. I have a bit of everything: I can defend, I can attack, I’m good on the floor, I’m good in the air. People think if you’re tall and win headers, that’s all you are. That is my strength and you use your strength, but that doesn’t take away from what you can do on the floor. People don’t see that. They only see height.” That, certainly, is all that Rodgers saw. Carroll returns to Anfield this afternoon not angry, not vengeful, but simply determined to open his eyes.

Red Alert wrote:Era 1 of the Liverpool's galacticos vs Era 2.

Downing and Carroll vs Lallana and Markovic

Art Morte wrote:
Looking at the table, the 3rd, 4th and 5th placed teams all have home games they're the favorites to win, especially ManU and Arsenal.

“Their [Wenger/Rodgers/Pellegrini] philosophy is different to ours. Ours is more about who are we playing against. Their philosophy is more ‘we always play this way’ and they won’t change, they carry doing on the same thing. That’s why you can beat them."

Red Alert wrote:

“Their [Wenger/Rodgers/Pellegrini] philosophy is different to ours. Ours is more about who are we playing against. Their philosophy is more ‘we always play this way’ and they won’t change, they carry doing on the same thing. That’s why you can beat them."

Can Fat Sam out-tactic Rodgers?

Red Alert wrote:"can" beat them. Not "will" beat them. He was clearly feeling sorry for your lot on the day.

Scared Of
   ive got a big fear for spiders i absolute hate them, also hate stuff like snakes n that (not my snake tho )

Lex wrote:Never gets old

http://archive.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=4957197631

Wonder why he never updates it anymore?

El Gunner wrote:

Lex wrote:Never gets old

http://archive.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=4957197631

Wonder why he never updates it anymore?

brilliant.
First I've heard of bebo though

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:

El Gunner wrote:

Lex wrote:Never gets old

http://archive.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=4957197631

Wonder why he never updates it anymore?

brilliant.
First I've heard of bebo though

Shows how young you are

It was what we used before Facebook etc.

El Gunner wrote:

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:

El Gunner wrote:
brilliant.
First I've heard of bebo though

Shows how young you are

It was what we used before Facebook etc.

Thought the only thing that existed before FB was MSN and Myspace

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:How the *bleep* is that not a red? He punched the ball in the *bleep* net ffs.

Bullshit.

Art Morte wrote:

Great Leader Sprucenuce wrote:How the *bleep* is that not a red? He punched the ball in the *bleep* net ffs.

Bullshit.

Isn't it red only if you prevent a goal with your hand?