Well the only reason I mentioned Messi was because I thought you were suggesting regarding my description of Carroll that heading was his main strength that it was the same for all forwards and so I mentioned a few shorter ones where it isn't, like Messi, Defoe and Owen but you've explained what you meant now so fair enough.

The fouling point regarding Carroll I was mentioning though was that City clearly feared his aerial ability tonight and so every time a high ball came in the were jumping all over him and clattering him from behind and I think the referee gave a foul to him once for it all night.

Funny you should mention Crouch too as he often gets penalised for fouls when a high ball is heading his way and others are fouling him because they fear his height and heading when he's just trying to get to the ball but the foul goes against him and it's the same with Carroll, they don't need to foul to win a header as it's their strength.

Carroll has scored 14 Premier League goals and 7 have been headers so that's 50% but being good in the air doesn't just mean scoring with your head, winning headers, flick ons and knock downs for others count too. He's also scored 40 goals in his first team career and so has shown it's not all about heading, even if that is his key strength.

He's gone there injured and has not had a run in the side and as much as you might do in training, you need actual matches to get match sharp and fit and he'll get that now with Suarez banned.

Regarding whether he's good in the air or not decide for yourselves with some of these goals when he was getting the crosses and service.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_kanJ5Qqac

If you sign a player with a certain strength then you have to play to those strengths or why bother signing the player? Or if you want to play a certain formation or another style of play then sign ones you think that will suit.

When Thierry Henry scored his 227th goal for Arsenal the other night, how many of them do you reckon have been headers? I'd guess that it's not even into double figures so it would have been a bit pointless all through his Arsenal career to play two wingers constantly putting high balls into the middle for him, just as it's pointless putting slide rule passes through the middle into Carroll to chase and beat defenders for speed because that's not his strength.

Going on the percentage of headed goals scored by players in their personal total since the Premier League began, as of last year it looks like this:

Duncan Ferguson 52%
Andy Carroll 50%
Tim Cahill 50%
Niall Quinn 45%
Peter Crouch 44%
Dion Dublin 41%
Les Ferdinad 29%

I don't think it's a coincidence that all bar Cahill are around the 6ft 2ins-6ft 4ins mark and Carroll has the best record of them all going by a headed goals to games ratio, with one every 4.71 games with the next best being Cahill with one every 6.3 games.

hes garbage and will be gone from liverpool soon but u can believe what u want! im pretty sure 95% of the world agree with me!

Quick enough? He only closed the keeper Hart down tonight!

I'm not sure if you are on the wind up here mate. Are you a Newcastle or Liverpool fan? have you ever been to a match with Andy playing and seen what runs he makes?

Forgive me ilikewavingatbuses for producing a few facts to back up my argument instead of just generalisations....whatever was I thinking of?

You are more than entitled to have any opinion you like about Carroll but the point was touched on being was he actually good in the air and so I produced video evidence and stats to show that he is, what's so terribly wrong about that?

What I'm saying about Carroll's runs BarryGrant is that he's not the type to run onto through balls and out speed defenders like Henry and Torres did in their prime and he's also unlikely to beat numerous defenders and pass or walk the ball into the net like they also did in their prime.

To use a racing analogy you don't buy a sprinter and run it in the cup races and vice versa and if they've paid £35million for Carroll then they did so knowing what his strengths are but have chosen not to play to them. That would be like Arsenal playing Arshavin up front alone against Terry and Alex of Chelsea and spending all game knocking high balls in towards him and expect him to win the aerial battle.

A point that might actually be missed on you ilikewavingatbusesis that I've personally not made any judgement on Carroll to be good, bad or indifferent, I've just said they aren't using him best and playing to his streghts and I stand by that. I also made no direct comparisons on ability between him and Crouch but don't think it's coincidence that Crouch seems to play best with clubs using wingers/wide players like Bale and Lennon or Etherington and Pennant. He already has 8 goals in 19 games for Stoke so far.

FFS IMA is there a jockey or trainer you dont defend?

we know ima, u never make any judgement, u trawl thru the net stating 'facts' and never choose any side of the fence, m familiar with u ffs

all im saying is andy carroll is garbage and hasnt played well in a LONG time, and spends vast amounts of the game jogging around in the direction of the ball but never with any urgency, and when he gets a pass it usually hits off him instead of actually contolling it!

carrolls strengths are going to night clubs, starting fights and getting p!ssed.

but u state comparisons with ruud saying he would never have scored as many goals as he did without beckham et al. how do u know this? we may aswell debate whose better, STS or dancing brave because we'll never know that either!

you obviously didnt watch carroll this evening and if u did then i dont see how u can defend a performance like that!

the bloke is fooking sh!te, he isnt scoring goals and is not helping himself but doing fack all about it!!

did not run an inch tonight!! whens the last time he had a good game?

hes useless mate but once youre enjoying his vids, id rather watch messi!!


gl

Shame on you ilwab.............have some respect for Glenmorangie effects in future,i thought you were talking about Tony Carroll.

Big Carols brother from the Stags Head,I bet IMA has never been in there............have you IMA?

I'm a Newcastle supporter and couldn't believe that Kenny Dalglish was prepared to pay £35 million for a goalscorer who was unproven in the premier league and had numerous off the field issues. He had £50 million burning a hole in his pocket from the Torres sale and he wasted it. The love affair between Liverpool supporters and Dalglish will not last long. When he managed Newcastle thousands stopped going to games because of the teams negativity, to be fair this Liverpool team with Suarez in do play attractive football.

I'm not defending his closing down of defenders BarryGrant and it does seem like he was doing it a bit half hearted last night but what I'm saying is I can half understand that when he's the only one up front trying to and it's so easy for the City back four to play piggy in the middle with him by just passing it back and forth to each other. It's that kind of thing that gets hotheads like Rooney in trouble where he gets frustrated getting no help and ends up lunging in on a defender.

I'd just like to point out that I didn't start the thread rrscaughtboy but I could return the question and ask if there a trainer or jockey on here that pocket talkers don't condemn?

I didn't say I didn't have an opinion on Carroll's ability or otherwise  ilikewavingatbuses, I just said that I hadn't expressed it but if I did so I'd say he's not the most mobile of players (but then which big men are?) but is decent in the air and has a got shot on him from distance with his left foot, both of which he has shown before for both his clubs and England when scoring for them.

The way the transfer window works now holywell has changed everything with footballer buys today. If Liverpool had sold Torres and not bought a replacement then there would have been uproars from the fans and with the £50million from Torres and the window running out of time, they probably paid more than they would have wanted for Carroll but offset that against getting £50million for a player a shadow of his former self and with his best days behind him.

Whilst Carroll might not have been PL proven over any length of time, he had shown that he could score goals in the PL for Newcastle and he was always either a long term investment for Liverpool or has sell on price potential if he doesn't make it there, and should he stay there for say a decade or more then that works out at £3.5million a season regarding his fee. Torres cost £50million and at best will be at Chelsea for 5 years at £10million a season regarding his transfer fee and has very little sell on value either in the next few seasons or at that end of those 5 years.

Part of Carroll's problem is he went to Liverpool injured and didn't play and with Suarez making such a good start it would have been daft to interrupt that but now he's banned they have to play Carroll and so should play to his strengths. They wouldn't play two wide men and put in loads of high crosses to Suarez so why expect Carroll to play in a way not best suited to him?

kuyt shows him how to score again!!

lanky streak is hopeless!

andy carroll doing well of late?

hes hopeless and gonna get sold

LOL....like I said when I started the sentence, "anyone who knows the first thing about football......."

Won everything in the air on Sunday including clearance out of defence headers and was even the player who put in the challenge when Kenny Miller looked like scoring and also came very close to scoring himself late on with a header too.

The game before in the FA Cup he took his goal well with a nice left foot finish and then headed back across goal to give Suarez a sitter after he had missed a penalty. A couple of games or so before he scored the opening goal (often crucial) in the league away to Wolves and seeing as though Kuyt was mentioned, he scored the winner to knock Man United out of the FA Cup from a flicked on header from Carroll, something I was on about earlier in the thread how it's not only scoring headed goals alone that makes him an aerial threat. Carroll also flicked on to make Bellamy's goal against Bolton away in the previous league game to that and also scored in the previous round of the FA Cup a couple of games before that, all of which happened during January to February which I think qualifies as "of late."

He's played in 8 cup games this season where he's been used more as a starter and scored in 3 of them which is about that 50% or 1 in every 2 ratio that is generally accepted as a good mark and in 6 of his last 11 games has made a telling contribution by either scoring or setting up a goal, so call me old fashioned but like I've said with the Fallon case, I go by what I see with my own eyes instead of having media punters make up my mind for me.

nice to see ANDY CAROLL in the horse racing forum. Although i see him more as a donkey.

On sunday Andy Carroll's stats were:

He played 103 minutes and touched the ball 36 times. He attempted zero long passes and 23 short passes, 69.6% of those passes were successful.

He had 6 attempts at goal, 5 of them from inside the box, 1 was on target.

Dirl Kuyt played 17 minutes and touched the ball 15 times. He attempted 7 passes, all short and 100% of them were successful.

He had 4 shots, 3 were inside the box, 1 outside, 1 was on target (Goal Accio!)

A cracking buzz, the same for those lads who lumped on Liverpool for some free munny after Dirks goal

I agree with your points, it's why you need to see as player play rather than relying on stats. Have you seen Andy Carroll play?

I've attended hundreds of football matches, I'd definitely put myself in your "anyone who knows the first thing about football" group.

Andy Carroll hasn't been doing well of late, along with the rest of his Liverpool career he's been average at best and often poor.

aye but theo walcott isnt the 8th most expensive footballer of all time. carroll is bound to do SOMETHING if he actually walks on to the pitch. his general play and attitude however is frankly appaling. no urgency from him whatsoever. how they paid 35 million for him is quite frightening!