Watching the game last night, I think he might be the solution to our CB problem. Tall, powerful, good in the tackle, a fair passer of the ball, wicked shot. Not over-blessed with pace and needs to work on his tactical awareness. What more do you need?
Looked to me like he had plenty of all three last night in fairness He would have been showing the same for us this season IMO. People can give him all the abuse they feel necessary but he's playing well and he CAN put the ****s up top Prem defenders...we've seen it. Will Borini ever do that? We all know he won't. Will Mandy do it every game? Probably not but I'd rather have him doing it for 15/20 games a season than have players who struggle to give us 6 or 7 good games a season. And before anyone gives me the "yeah but we saved lots of cash on his wages" bullshit...we didn't. We could have paid his entire wages for (at least) the next three years if we'd just kept him and not blown £11 odd million on bloody Borini ****ing madness I tell ya
TBF, I didn't watch the game I can see why people would say he would be good at CB. Plus, didn't he fill in there a few times for us last season? Got to say, it irritates me now when people refer to his price tag when evaluating / judging him, what would it be like if he became a CB...?
and i read newcastle may be putting in a bid for 10 mill, you have all heard it before but .............. At least he is playing well for WHU atm, madness why rodgers let him out on loan imo.
If you need Andy Carroll you're in trouble certainly not a top 4 striker. West ham spent the game smashing the ball up to him, you lot don't play that way.
He played well last night but against a weak defence. Vidic is a soft **** imo, he spent the whole game crying the ref about Carroll. Good spear tackle on the scummy rat Evra too, its just a shame the linesman could not do his job at the end because West Ham deserved to win and whiskey faces team got very,very lucky for about the 15th time this season.
West Ham played to his strengths and he looked good. No one can dispute the fact that he is a physical presence who can bully defences. A very useful Plan B but he's too expensive to have on our bench. Use the money and savings and invest in our Plan A before we look at Plan B's. In addition, there are other physical strikers who are cheaper and have more to their game than just winning the ball in the air.
ffs Rodgers has no Plan B except if losing at 80 min will throw on strikers, surely you have seen this
Only problem you might have with Carroll at CB is that he wouldn't be able to stop himself instinctively taking out his own keeper at every set piece. Other than that, he sounds like Tony Adams MkII
I don't get this "he's too expensive" We've already paid for him ffs, where does this "use the money" come from? We'll never get anything like what we paid for him back (unless there's another mug-team out there like us)
He certainly seems to follow a pattern of taking almost a season to settle. Didn't want to leave Newcdastle, pushed out the door, took time to settle with us, then pushed out the door again despite not wanting to go. Any manager who can't use him is like a plumber who refuses to use a spanner.
Don't know why you don't keep him and use him as competition for Sturridge. They might actually pair up pretty well together too, thinking about it. Carroll's far from perfect, but his ability on the ball's a bit underrated and he's a bloody nightmare in the air. Got to be a useful option when you're struggling to break down an entrenched opponent or even when you're struggling to hold onto a lead. Holds the ball up well, very useful on set-pieces at both ends of the pitch and he offers something different to your current options. Some people are slating Borini, but he doesn't seem to be an out-and-out striker, from what I've seen of him. Suarez, Sturridge, Carroll and the Italian would give you a variety of options if you wanted to play with two up front. You wouldn't want to start like that every week, but it's always good to have it available.
The savings as I said above are a nonsense. What have we saved this year by loaning him out and spending £11 mill on Borini (plus wages) a player who hasn't had one decent game? We've saved nothing...we've just thrown good money after bad. I think we can all agree Borini hasn't won us a single point this year...I'd put it forward that had we had Mandy this year we'd have won a few more games. Maybe not many but let's put it this way...if Mandy had (just as an example) got us goals to turn draws against Stoke, West Brom, Everton, Chelsea or Reading we could be 8/10 points better off. I've picked those games because I sat through all of them thinking Carroll would have been useful even if just for the last half an hour when defenders are tiring and we've huffed and puffed for an hour without much success (less so the Everton game in fairness). That would have put us in a great position to challenge for top four. Even if we'd only been 6 points better off we'd have a good chance of fifth (and extra revenue that would easily cover any outlay on wages). I heard the argument a lot in Jan that Sturridge "won't win us leagues but he'll push us up the table and improve the squad"...well Mandy would have done that too and we'd actually be BETTER off financially if we'd just kept him for the season. So tell me again why he is too expensive...
