10 Players Who Probably Regret Joining Liverpool
1. Andy Carroll
30 months ago, and the 21 year old Andy Carroll had everything he had dreamed of since he was a little boy, draped in his black and white bed-sheets. Worshipped and glorified by his excited hometown, the Geordie boy had moulded himself into the new Geordie number nine, and one of the most exciting prospects in English football. Fast forward just over three years, and he is an injury-prone striker, wasting away at a mid-table club in West Ham, and has dropped behind the likes of Rickie Lambert in the England pecking order. He must wonder how on earth he got to this abject point in his career.
The answer can be found on one very stirring page of Carrolls diary 31 January 2011. A day of gargantuan sorts, in which Fernando Torres traded Liverpool for Chelsea in a £50 million deal, a desperate Liverpool board threw £35 million at the stringent Mike Ashley to prize away the hottest asset in English football.
Andy Carroll was given 44 league games to replicate any resemblance of the form that earned him his record-breaking move. Instead, he wilted like a dying flower, notching six Premier League goals before a loan move to West Ham in 2012. He has since penned a permanent deal at Upton Park, to which the West Ham co-owners have since expressed their public regret, citing that if they had known of his injury problems we wouldnt have signed the player.
As he watches the first two months of the season from the sidelines, adding yet more time spent injured than actually on the field of play to his track record, Carroll must long for the days he spent up north in his hometown, revered as something of a local hero.
Which other wasted talents probably regret ever joining Liverpool? Share your picks below in the comments thread.