Retired England striker claims he should’ve had Andy Carroll’s Liverpool move
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The Reds took a £35m gamble on Carroll after seeing him score 11 Premier League goals for Newcastle during the first half of the 2010/11 campaign, but the big Geordie could not acclimatise at Anfield and went on to score just 11 times in 58 appearances.Liverpool could surely have signed a better player to act as a foil for Luis Suarez, who arrived on the same day, and having seen his career ended 12 months earlier at the age of just 26, former England striker Dean Ashton has now admitted that he was left bitter by Carroll’s move, feeling that had he been fit, he would’ve had the move instead.Liverpool fans, you have £10 to spend on your dream front three, who are you picking and why? Clearly, Ashton was in no place to join Liverpool by the time Carroll arrived in 2011, but, as he told the In The Mixer podcast, he felt that had the injury not happened, joining clubs such as the Reds would have become a possibility for him.
As a result, he felt Carroll’s move 16 years ago ‘should have been him.’ “I was so bitter, so bitter, because, why me?” he said of his early retirement. And when you see and you know that as such, it can be hard.“And, yeah, I was just a bit bitter in terms of, why did it have to be me?
It’s not fair that I don’t get to at least see what I could have got to, as such. But I think that’s normal, well, I’d like to think it’s normal that you feel that way and it just takes time to let that go, because it’s not fair on other people.” READ MORE: Hugo Ekitike’s Liverpool return should come with a bonus January signing “It’s not fair on Andy Carroll getting a move to Liverpool and me going, ‘he doesn’t deserve that, that should have been me,’ for example, which is strange thinking, but you can’t help feeling that way when you’re in the moment.” Having lost against Liverpool in the 2006 FA Cup final, Ashton also admitted that he was jealous of players who had been able to win big trophies while he was completely out of the game.