Tom Carroll is recalling the times when it became abundantly apparent that he needed to return to the game he had played since joining Tottenham as an eight-year-old. He spent last season without a club, and seeing the scores roll in on the vidiprinter became difficult. “I would have Soccer Saturday on and I’d be like: ‘I don’t know if I can watch this,’” the 31-year-old says. “You’d see so many names pop up: ‘Yep, played with him, against him.’ Then you think: ‘Gah, that should still be me.’ You look for your old clubs and I’d be like: ‘I can’t watch this, I’m going to have to take the dog out.’”
So Carroll, the former Tottenham, Aston Villa, Swansea, Queens Park Rangers and Ipswich midfielder, would take Griff, the Welsh terrier he got shortly after signing for Swansea, for a walk near the family home in Hertfordshire. “My norm for Saturdays was matchdays … my missus was probably getting fed up with me because that was when I was my grumpiest,” he says, breaking into a sheepish grin of sorts. “Mentally, it was really tough. I could get snappy if I saw a score pop up or someone scored. She would know because sometimes I would just walk out [the house] and clear my mind.”
