Liverpool have earned an exemplary reputation for their transfer business since the arrival of Jurgen Klopp and Michael Edwards at Anfield, with the combined elite football brains developing and building one of the most successful teams in the world over the last half-decade.
The Reds have enjoyed success across the board with their fantastically assembled Anfield powerhouse with the Champions League, Premier League, FA Cup, League Cup, UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup won since the 2018/19 season.
Virgil van Dijk, Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane, Fabinho, Roberto Firmino and Georginio Wijnaldum are just a handful of the players who have become household names since their arrivals on Merseyside, all becoming trusted components under Klopp during his reign at Anfield
However, carefully crafted and well-thought-out transfer business hasn’t always been the culture for the Merseyside giants, especially when a short period of transition in the early 2010s became a memory that many Liverpool supporters try to etch from their memory.
The January 2011 transfer window is fondly remembered for the arrival of arguably one of Liverpool’s best players in the Premier League era when Luis Suarez came to Anfield, but it will also be one to forget with the £35m signing of Newcastle United’s highly-rated young striker Andy Carroll.
It was nothing short of a disastrous panic buy after selling Fernando Torres to Chelsea on deadline day and will forever haunt Carroll’s short-lived legacy at the club, with the mid-season swoop being voted the worst-ever signing in Premier League history during a survey in 2022.
Despite penning a five-and-a-half-year deal, the striker only made 58 appearances for the Reds, scoring 11 goals and registering six assists until he was finally offloaded just two-and-a-half years later when he joined West Ham United for £15m – a huge £20m loss on what Liverpool had paid the Magpies.
Where is Andy Carroll now?
Since his move to east London in 2013, the former England international has become a journeyman in the aftermath of his six-year spell with the Hammers.
Carroll – who Scott Groom suggested was the Reds’ “worst” signing – went full circle to make a shock return to his boyhood club Newcastle after becoming a free agent in 2019 and going without a club for the start of the 2021/22 season. That has been followed by a stint at West Bromwich Albion and two spells at Reading, for whom he currently plays in the Championship.
It’s safe to say the now 34-year-old never reached the heights in his career that he would’ve hoped, with his failure to prove himself at Anfield the catalyst in his footballing misfortunes.
However, the player has spoken out and hints that he doesn’t regret his transformation from hometown hero to generational flop, saying: “Listen, I would have rather stayed at the time and all the way to the helicopter I’m thinking, ‘What is happening? What am I doing?’. But looking back, and how it shaped me as a player and a person, I would honestly still do it. I probably needed to get out of the city to grow up.”
With that being said, the former recruitment team at Anfield will probably not carry the same sentiment in hindsight, and the signing of Carroll remains a transaction over which Liverpool and their supporters will have nightmares.