Andy Carroll - Best Striker in the World

[Bari]

I've not read it all but he does he make a valid point. To be fair to Charlie Adam, he's done pretty well so far. If he can cut out the stupid fouls he constantly gives away, he will be a very good player for us. The other two, well I won't say anymore. But at least while Harry Redknapp is in charge of Tottenham, we havae chance of recouping some of the money we wasted on those two. He's the only manager other manager left who is stupid enough to sign overrated English players

plagiarism. You Stupid MP

[saj]

plagiarism. You Stupid MP

******* I didn't think you posted on here anymore

[Tee]

You c + p'd Bari's post?

Bari you guddah, where you been hiding.

[Exiled_red]

[little dave hedgehog]

haha can we refer to copy and pasting someone's post from another website as sajing?

please?

[Fivex]

Already got a name - creaming

[little dave hedgehog]

no, creaming is posting "insider info" from unnamed, and frankly ****, sources as if it were your own. this is posting other people's opinions on fairly unimportant topics

[Neil Young]

And copying someone else's signature is 'domming'.

[Kenneth]

I don't think there's a language in the world that's as expressive as the English language. 'refreshingly hairy growler' is a great example.

[saj]

You c + p'd Bari's post?

Bari you guddah, where you been hiding.

He's become a monk. I actually paraphrased what he said to me on the phone

haha can we refer to copy and pasting someone's post from another website as sajing?

We can indeed refer to it as sajing. I love plagiarism - it's what got me through university

please?

Already got a name - creaming

I'm sorry mate it can't called the creaming. It should be called the PEZZERing. Pezzer was the original insider - none of his prophecies came true.

no, creaming is posting "insider info" from unnamed, and frankly ****, sources as if it were your own. this is posting other people's opinions on fairly unimportant topics

I think Pezzer knew a barber in Essex or somewhere

[Gibbo]

Right after reading through the last 10 or so pages of this thread I feel the need to give my 2 pence worth all at once and then be quiet about it until at least January, when IMO if given the playing time we will all have a wider view of what Carroll can and can't do and how good he could look for us.

I would like to start off by saying that I really like Carroll and would really like to see him succeed at this football club, I don't like the fact that people are calling him **** amongst other things as I don't think that is the right way to support someone that we want to do well, yes, Carroll is out of form at the minute but as we have seen at Newcastle Carroll does have it in his locker to be unplayable at times, The game against us that Newcastle won last season he (and Ranger when he came on) bullied our defense and we had no answer to them, the Goal against Arsenal for the Barcodes last season is something that I want him to see doing for us, his movement and actual header for that goal was excellent;

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IJgXOHoHpg"]Andy Carroll Vs. Arsenal - YouTube[/ame]

Not the best quality but look at how high he gets off the ground to beat the keeper to that ball, that is something I haven't seen from him yet for us, It has been mentioned that defenders that are much smaller than him are beating him to headers, which is something I have seen myself in the flesh at a real game, it just doesn't make sense to me. But what this video does show is that he is more than capable of heading the ball, people said exactly the same about Crouch when he was here, but he scored his fair share of headed goals, Carroll CAN head a ball, it is a definite trait of his and one of the reasons that we bought him.

Next I would like to address the fee, I don't think there is a Liverpool fan out there that can honestly say that we didn't pay too much for Carroll, which is 100% not his fault, now I do think that when we had earlier bids knocked back for Carroll that we should have just took a punt on a then unproven Suarez until the end of the season and maybe revisit our interest in Carroll or indeed another striker in the summer but Kenny and the rest of the staff obviously thought Carroll was the right person for us, and what else where Newcastle going to do, they could see we where panic buying and had recently acquired £50m into our account, of course they where going to try and get the premium for Carroll which they got off us with relative ease, we had our man and I think the plan all along was to build a squad around him.

I think we as fans need to look at the positives that Andy brings to the team rather than the negative aspects, Carroll has a wonderful left foot, amongst the best I've seen, he really can generate some power behind the ball and he can fire a strike in from 25-30 yards out, as we have seen for us and against us. Some examples are of course, the goal against us;

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26LGaxPD4L4&feature=related"]Newcastle 3 1 Liverpool Carroll - YouTube[/ame]

His goal against Man City (which everyone must agree, his best game for us, Surely?)

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdUCpwa_FGA"]Andy Carroll Liverpool goals! ( 2 vs man city | 1 vs Liverpool ) BEAUTIFUL! - YouTube[/ame]

And to some extent the one against Exeter was also a very sweet strike

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oaDxKU5mkg"]Andy Carroll goal vs Exeter city - YouTube[/ame]

We have also seen in his dissallowed goal against Sunderland, (another game that for me he played well in) he can have a composed touch and finish in front of goal

(couldn't find a video of this, maybe Mos can help me out)

I think overall his work rate is very good, especially for a target man, he always seems to try and get back and win the ball if he loses it, and although he is not blessed with lightning pace tries as hard as he can to get into the area for crosses put in for him, I think maybe his ability to get into more intelligent positions for him to receive these crosses is something to work on, but as pointed out in this thread several times he's only 22, and it will come with him in time.

One thing that does worry me about Carroll is his first touch, it seems to get away from him a lot on occasions in the middle of the pitch, i have seen it a few times when he was failed to control a pass with a single touch and has ended up chasing his heavy first touch and losing the ball, this is something that for me he really needs to work on as I think his first touch will be very important to the game that he needs to play for us.

Alot of people have mentioned throughout this thread that Carroll's problem is that he needs to adapt to the way we play, I do however thing the way we bought over the summer was especially to provide to Carroll's strength, especially the signings of Downing, Adam and Enrique, Downing and Enrique speak for themselves, Downing is the first out and out winger we have had in the team for a while, and on occasions has put some excellent crosses in that haven't been met, same with Enrique, both of them have already proved for us that they are good crossers of the ball its just about these crosses meeting the target that is Andy's head, I also feel that it is obvious that Adam was bought so that he could pick Andy out from almost anywhere on the pitch, and Carroll would either use the ball the score himself, or bring in other people around him, unfortunately this hasn't quite happened yet, as we seem to have two styles of football, pass and move, or hoof to Carroll, we somehow need to find away to mix these two styles together, something else that I think will come with time.

I also think Carroll's passing is very underrated he makes a lot of successful passes and I've even seen him spread some long balls around the pitch every now and again

At the risk of maybe bringing up the same point over and over again I'll just stick in some stats about a couple of Carroll's games at Newcastle, and two games he played for us after he signed last season (The Man City win and the Spurs loss)

All of the pictures containing the stats are in my photobucket account, here:

http://s1229.photobucket.com/albums/ee480/Gibbo9/

I think we are yet to see the best of Carroll and IMO he will prove a lot of people wrong when he starts to bang goals in for fun as well as get several assists, I would like to see us play a 4-2-3-1 formation with Gerrard Suarez and Bellamy all supporting Carroll, but I couldn't see Kenny going for it.

I think I may have got a little bit carried away with this post, but if you don't bother to read all of it check out the stats from my photobucket account, they are from a nifty little app on my ipod that is powered by opta, the ones from Newcastle also really show how much Enrique influenced the play there.

I better get off to sleep now, looking forward to seeing us batter Wolves and maybe Carroll getting a couple of goals

[Shaggy]

Miles better yesterday. Bar the City game it was honestly the first time he's shown anything at all IMO...you could actually see he has things to work with, attributes. Did really well. Touch much improved.

That little flick in the 2nd half was ace

[Fernandinho]

I really enjoyed his performance especially after all the talk about him. Hope he keeps building and its not a one off.

[BringbackBiscan]

Thought he looked good again yesterday. That ball he played into Suarez was first class, especially when he had Downing ahead of him but had the confidence to say nah **** it I can do it.

One thing I was impressed with was how he attacking the back post a lot more. A big striker like him can pick up 10-15 goals a season by just simply getting in there. He was unlucky with the header that came off the post by doing just that.

Oh and for the guy that says he only wins 20% of balls in the air if we're lucky

Statistic Description

Player

Aerial Duels Won

5
Aerial Duels Lost

5
Total 10

So still not a game that's under 50% :P

[Vermilion]

Just heard a bookie talking about odds for the title so far, apparently we have drifted out further now......after being "unimpressive again" V Wolves....think he said 30/1 now.