Liverpool FC Forum

[zarababe]

He and Suarez are gonna be GREATTTTTTTTTTTTTT ! Bring it on next season is gonna be awesome

[PabloAimar]

lets hope carragher and skrtel are told they have to do an hours worth of training with a 'football' for every 3 punts of the ball up the pitch in carroll's general direction.
i know there's so much more to the colossus's game but i fear the worst with our 2 centre backs (not inc. agger) and after witnessing the crouch years.

[SouthCoastShankly]

lets hope carragher and skrtel are told they have to do an hours worth of training with a 'football' for every 3 punts of the ball up the pitch in carroll's general direction.
i know there's so much more to the colossus's game but i fear the worst with our 2 centre backs (not inc. agger) and after witnessing the crouch years.

You seem to forget that during the "Crouch years" we regularly competed in the CL and also occasionally challenged for the title. Considering how far away from that we are now there is no real room for being picky about the style of football being used to win games.

Crouch scored goals, good goals. He should never of been sold. Carroll will score goals and we will see a long ball game creep into our play, but if it means winning and back to CL football there are no complaints from me.

You only have to look at Arsenal to see what happens when you prioritise style of play over results.

[Kenny Kan]

lets hope carragher and skrtel are told they have to do an hours worth of training with a 'football' for every 3 punts of the ball up the pitch in carroll's general direction.
i know there's so much more to the colossus's game but i fear the worst with our 2 centre backs (not inc. agger) and after witnessing the crouch years.

Yes, it is a bit of a worry.

[Ben Patrick]

lets hope carragher and skrtel are told they have to do an hours worth of training with a 'football' for every 3 punts of the ball up the pitch in carroll's general direction.
i know there's so much more to the colossus's game but i fear the worst with our 2 centre backs (not inc. agger) and after witnessing the crouch years.

You seem to forget that during the "Crouch years" we regularly competed in the CL and also occasionally challenged for the title. Considering how far away from that we are now there is no real room for being picky about the style of football being used to win games.

Crouch scored goals, good goals. He should never of been sold. Carroll will score goals and we will see a long ball game creep into our play, but if it means winning and back to CL football there are no complaints from me.

You only have to look at Arsenal to see what happens when you prioritise style of play over results.

I dont think what he said is wrong to be honest.
Since Kenny has come back we have played better football and its great to see.
Much less wasting posession compared with previous seasons.
There are certain players like Carra and Skrtel that are wasteful 9 times out of 10 and with Carroll up top they may resort to the long punt when they shouldnt.
To be honest both probably shouldnt be in the team.
Carra looks fecked every game and Skrtel is just sh!te.

[lakes10]

So did Andy Carroll use an agent to sign for Liverpool?The £35m striker Andy Carroll is in dispute with his former agent but one was involved in January's record-breaking transfer from Newcastle

John Henry, the Moneyball-reading US student of sports, made it clear when his Fenway Sports Group bought Liverpool that he wanted to spend time learning how English football works before making any major strategic decisions. The 31 January frenzy, when Liverpool signed Newcastle United's Andy Carroll for a record £35m fee, must have been like a crash course for him.

The Guardian understands that in Carroll's contract with Liverpool, signed in the final hours of the transfer window, the player stated that he did not use an agent; a solicitor, Richard Green, said he had advised him. Liverpool did use an agent. They employed David Bromley, whose name is noted in the contract below that of Damien Comolli, the man Henry hired in November as the director of football strategy and who is in charge of signing players.

Bromley is not a well-known agent. He does hold a Fifa licence and is authorised by the Football Association, giving the name of his company, Centurion Sports Management, registered in Maidstone, Kent. The company has no website and no telephone number is listed on Bromley's Fifa entry, nor in directory enquiries. The contact detail provided in the Fifa agents' list is a hotmail address. Bromley has not responded to a series of questions sent to that address asking what his role was in the Carroll transfer.

Carroll is reported to be in a dispute with his former agent, Peter Harrison, who claims he has a two-year written contract with the player to represent him, running from March 2009 into this month – so covering the move to Liverpool. Reports of Harrison's claim against Carroll for allegedly breaking that deal have said the striker wanted to be represented instead by Mark Curtis, an agent with long involvement at Bolton Wanderers, where he began acting for Kevin Nolan, who became Carroll's mentor at Newcastle.

Curtis also represented Sam Allardyce for years and is said to have been at odds with Harrison since the BBC's 2006 Panorama programme on transfers. In it Harrison was filmed telling an undercover reporter he did deals at Bolton by paying Craig Allardyce, son of Sam, who was then their manager. Allardyce Jnr had worked for Curtis's company, Sports Player Management, until 2003, when the Bolton chairman, the Football Association board member Phil Gartside, responding to concerns about possible conflicts of interest, prohibited Craig Allardyce from doing deals at Bolton while working for Curtis.

The programme reported that Harrison had paid Craig Allardyce for working on the signing of two players by his father at Bolton, the midfielder Hidetoshi Nakata and goalkeeper Ali Al-Habsi. Harrison subsequently said Craig Allardyce had worked legitimately on the deals. Neither the FA nor Fifa has ever charged Harrison, Allardyce or anybody else with any breach.

In English football, if a player leaves his agent part way through a contract he cannot be represented by another for two years. The FA, which regulates agents in England, will interpret it as poaching by the second agent, a serious breach of the rules. Carroll, looking at a five-year deal at Liverpool on a reported £80,000 per week, could not be represented by an agent if indeed he had a contract with Harrison at the time.

Several prominent agents who have worked for years in English football told the Guardian they had never heard of or come across David Bromley in any deal. An analysis of Bromley's records at Companies House shows that nine firms of which he has been a director have been struck off the register and dissolved. The one he lists at Fifa, Centurion Sports Management, was formed 15 months ago and has not yet been required to file accounts.

His only other company is Direct Sports Management, which has been proposed by Companies House for striking off the register and has not filed accounts since those to 31 May 2007. Bromley is still registered as the secretary of the company – and the sole director is Mark Curtis.

In two other companies, both now dissolved and struck off the register, Bromley and Curtis were co-directors. In one, Property Hunter, registered at the same Maidstone address as Centurion Sports Management, Bromley and Curtis, both 48, were the only directors and shareholders. Curtis cited his occupation as "sports agent" while Bromley is listed as "IT director". The company last filed accounts two years ago and in April last year Bromley and Curtis applied to have the firm dissolved.

The other company in which they were co-directors was the football agency, Sports Player Management, for which Craig Allardyce worked. Bromley was a director for three years, resigning in April 2002. That was when Curtis made around £1m by selling the company to another agency, Premier Management Holdings plc. In April 2006, Premier Management revealed that Sports Player Management was to be wound up after it was hit with a petition from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs for "unpaid arrears of taxes" dating back to before Curtis had sold it and when Bromley was still the secretary – the financial year to 28 February, 2002. The company's most recent accounts show that by May 2005 it owed £250,000 in corporation tax.

Curtis left Premier Management in 2004, the company saying he was going to "concentrate on other business areas that are incompatible with his working full-time as a football agent".

Curtis has, though, continued to work as a football agent. He is licensed by Fifa, now giving his address as a company, Select Sports Management, in Gibraltar, an offshore tax haven. He did not reply to a series of questions about whether he was involved in the Carroll transfer in any capacity. Harrison's claim against Carroll has gone to arbitration, where proceedings are confidential, so Harrison declined to comment on the revelation that Bromley, a partner of Curtis's, acted for Liverpool. Newcastle refused to answer any questions about how the deal worked.

Liverpool declined to say in detail why they needed an agent to help sign Newcastle's centre-forward; why, if they did need one, they chose Bromley; what Bromley did exactly and how much they paid for his services. A spokesman said: "The club did use the services of an agent on the transfer. This was a high-value deal, concluded within very tight timescales and we had some external support on it."

To sum up, the 22-year-old recently capped England centre-forward did not use an agent to negotiate his terms in moving to Liverpool for a British record fee. Liverpool did employ an agent: David Bromley, a close associate of Mark Curtis, whom Carroll's former agent, Peter Harrison, has accused of acting for the player.

Curtis and Harrison are reported to have fallen out after the BBC's Panorama alleged Harrison paid Craig Allardyce, who had worked for Curtis, on transfer deals at Bolton when the club was managed by his father, Sam Allardyce, who Curtis represented.

And John Henry, who arrived from US baseball, a sport in which agents can act only for players, has learned that no rules have been broken, that this is the way the biggest ever deal between two English clubs had to be done.

david.conn@guardian.co.uk

[Kenny Kan]

lets hope carragher and skrtel are told they have to do an hours worth of training with a 'football' for every 3 punts of the ball up the pitch in carroll's general direction.
i know there's so much more to the colossus's game but i fear the worst with our 2 centre backs (not inc. agger) and after witnessing the crouch years.

Very much justified after tonight, new this was coming.

WimblPool.

[metalhead]

He looked good today, he lacked service and ultimately as many feared that our back four started hoofing the ball to him. Looks promising, can't wait for him partnering with Suarez

[Dundalk]

Yeah they may cut out all this long ball $hit, we wont stand for that. The lad looked okay tonight, he was hungry but still not match fit and it showed. There is more to him the a target man but someone needs to tell our central defenders that!!

[jimmy brighton]

lets hope carragher and skrtel are told they have to do an hours worth of training with a 'football' for every 3 punts of the ball up the pitch in carroll's general direction.
i know there's so much more to the colossus's game but i fear the worst with our 2 centre backs (not inc. agger) and after witnessing the crouch years.

Very much justified after tonight, new this was coming.

WimblPool.

That's exactly what I was saying to a mate I was texting to at half-time. In fact, I was speaking to my dad last week and when he said (about the 1st leg) that we looked so much more promising when Carroll came on, I said that I'm scared we're gonna turn into a long ball team. Boy did we prove that tonight

[burjennio]

If we arnt going to play long ball we need quality out wide, something we dont have atm. Something we're going to have to address in the summer.

[Thommo's perm]

If we arnt going to play long ball we need quality out wide, something we dont have atm. Something we're going to have to address in the summer.

Johnson is the new pennant

[tubby]

It's plain as day we need some quality on the wings and im sure come the summer it's one of the first areas that Kenny will look at. We were close to getting Ashley Cole so im sure it's not something that isn't on Kenny's mind.

[shabelle50]

If we arnt going to play long ball we need quality out wide, something we dont have atm. Something we're going to have to address in the summer.

Johnson is the new pennant

I take the point but I don't blame Johnson he had two Braga players constantly in front of him in the second half. Where was Cole or Meireles giving him more support? Aldo was right on LFCTV we missed Kelly in both ties but the lack of movement was all to clear. Maxi needs to be released on a free as soon as possible I don't know how Rafa ever brought such a waster to LFC he makes Voronin look effective!

[Thommo's perm]

We were close to getting Ashley Cole so im sure it's not something that isn't on Kenny's mind.

So it IS on his mind?