MFletcher

It's not hypocrisy, as I've already outlined. It's not hypocrisy if a player improves and you change your mind about what he could ultimately do for the club. I really can't stress the above point enough. It is not hypocrisy if you change your mind about a player further down the line and it's pretty dense to keep repeating yourself on the point despite having it explained in perfectly reasonable terms. The Carroll of six months ago didn't seem to want to try. The Carroll at the end of the season scored late winners against Blackburn and Everton, played extremely well against Chelsea in the league, nearly rescued the cup final after what had been a pretty poor performance up to that point. He then went to the Euros and had a reasonable tournament. He is not playing to the same poor standard he was six months ago. This means you change your mind as to what he can offer. This is not hypocrisy. It means I can't judge a player's potential all that well, but hypocritical it is not.

I'm quite sure I could go back to 2007 to find people having a go at Lucas or 2010 to find people having a go at Skrtel. Players improve, circumstances change. If we're going to resort to a mass-quoting session every time someone posts something contrary this place would fall apart. I'm quite sure I made numerous positive posts about Carroll in the interim, but that would rather destroy Tommy's point if he highlighted them. I actually think it was quite a childish post to make, especially given he focused only on the posts where I had a go and not where I said anything positive. Ach well.

"When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?" - John Maynard Keynes Since then, he has stepped up to the plate in big games. He's applied himself, he looks like he cares. He's started scoring important goals when he has been needed. He has come on and changed games. He was doing none of this when those comments were made. If this was six months ago, I'd have driven him to the airport myself. It isn't. The circumstances from then and now have changed. Further, if Kenny had wanted to ditch him, we'd have said "he's used him for 18 months and wants to get rid - that's probably fair enough". Rodgers has not used him yet and hasn't even seen him in training before deciding he wants rid. He improved markedly at the end of the season and looked as if he gave a s***. Maybe because he feared being sold this summer, maybe he got fitter, I don't know.

This. I just don't get it.

You have the opportunity to do so. I've no doubt a few will shoot me down, but this sale looks to me as if he's indulging in a bit of a vanity project with the whole "I have a way of playing" line. I don't think his "way of playing" is sufficiently impressive to justify binning off a striker who, whilst young and clearly very inconsistent, has the potential to develop into an extremely useful player over the course of the next few years. He's only 23, and binning him off before even seeing what he's like whenever you do your various drills in training etc. is bizarre. I just don't like it and I really cannot see a reason why you'd do it without even giving him a chance at all. I actually feel sorry for Carroll over it.

I just can't understand binning Carroll before even looking at him in training.

Agreed. Something about Carroll, really. I think he's the sort we could regret selling, especially when he's only 23.

Walcott is dreadful. Selling Carroll is only fine if we replace him with someone better. Really quite disappointed to see him almost certainly leaving. It's a big decision to take when he hasn't even looked at him in pre-season training.

You've managed to miss the point spectacularly. Try reading it again.

And how - just how - is that relevant to the point I've just made about the fees we've paid for players in the past year and a half?

Carroll has potential. Downing doesn't deserve to wear the shirt.

Regardless of what the situation is now, they've f***ed up. Either they did the deals of Carroll, Downing et al themselves, which is bad. Or they delegated it out to someone who wasn't up to it, which is bad. Or they delegated it out and approved it, which is bad. Either way, it's very, very bad management. There's no getting away from it. We've basically pissed away close to £20M on Carroll alone and f*** knows what hits we could take on the likes of Downing or Adam.

Agreed. We're f***ing hopeless.

That may be so, but a £20M plus hit? We're mugs in the market and have been for some time.

We might as well give up and will deserve everything we get if we start loaning people like Carroll out. One need only look at what's happened with Aquilani to see what an utter f***-up it is. If they want him, they pay for him. That needs to be the mantra we adopt, although quite why we're f***ing him off when he finally started to look good is one of life's mysteries.

I could see us wanting rid of Downing though. He actually makes me angry.

Was criminally underused, very disappointed to see him leave.

He's either delusional or he thinks he's "selling himself" without realising what a prat he's making of himself. His career over the last seven years has been an absolute shambles, really.

We'd sign Ba and then his kneecap would fall off. He's one to avoid on that basis alone.

I'm sure he will, but he's 23. He's started showing form. He was s*** most of last season, but you can see that the tools are there for him to be a monster. Dempsey's got a couple of years of form behind him but is already 29. One could become something special, the other definitely won't at this stage of his career. I just think it's f***ing mental to be selling him unless we're getting in someone who is obviously going to contribute more than he has the potential to next year. Dempsey does not strike me as that man. Lest we forget that Adam performed well in a pretty crap team and was shown up as a heap of s*** when he made the step up.

Andy Carroll must wonder what the f***'s going on here.

I agree with this, really.

I will struggle to express my anger if we sell Carroll and replace him with Dempsey.

We might actually send him on loan? Good grief.

Selling Carroll at this point is also stupid, by the way. f*** sake, he's actually started to look like a very good player. Downing can go, mind. Useless.