11 Players Newcastle Fans Wrongly Thought Were The Future

10. Andy Carroll

Young, Geordie and comparatively prolific, Andy Carroll should have been Newcastle's number 9 for the next ten years, firing the club back up the scoring charts if not the actual league. Sadly though, Liverpool decided to make the numb-headed decision to offer £35m up front, and Mike Ashley decided that that amount was enough to make it easier to stomach the accusations that he was nothing more than a greedy businessman with his hand in the Toon till. In retrospect, Newcastle's sale of Carroll was one of the most inspired bits of business ever done by the club, because he was on the verge of imploding (and had already picked up the start of the injuries that have since ruined his career - making Liverpool's bid for him even more ludicrous), but that didn't dampen the hype. Carroll was the perfect combination of local, hungry and gifted, and thanks to the precedent set by Alan Shearer, pretty much everyone expected that he'd be around forever. But money talks, and Liverpool love nicking our best players.