Andy Carroll’s poor cat.
Such was the unplanned nature of the 22-year-old’s move to Liverpool on January transfer deadline day in 2011 that he’d only recently bought a new pet.
As far as he was concerned he’d be playing for his boyhood club and in his home town for years to come, maybe the rest of his career.
He was Newcastle United’s No.9 after all, the new Alan Shearer. This was everything he had ever wanted for himself. Plus a cat.
“It was mad,” Carroll recalled upon his return to Newcastle in 2019.
“I was in the gym on the bike doing some work and it came up on Sky Sports News – £20million rejected, £25million rejected, £30million rejected.
“Everyone’s coming in saying, ‘what’s happening?’, and I was like, basically, ‘I’m not going anywhere, I’ve got a new contract here’.
“And then suddenly it was, ‘go and see the gaffer’. Next thing I knew I was in a helicopter to Liverpool.
“I was happy, just about to sign a new deal, and then gone. I’d just bought a house, I’d just got a cat. It was in the house, and I never went back to the house – I left in the helicopter and my brother had to have the cat!”
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As Carroll’s brother studied the whys and wherefores of cat ownership, the big man was heading into another world, a world where as Liverpool’s record signing, the £35million England centre-forward, there would be a level of expectation placed upon him that he would never be able to live up to.
We know now that that move was a mistake from the Reds, an expensive blunder which regularly tops lists of the worst transfers fans like to point to.
Carroll was nowhere near ready for Liverpool - he admitted he had to Google the players on his helicopter ride to Merseyside - but at the time it had been impossible for the Reds to ignore him, and they wanted him for appearances just as much as anything else.
Six weeks earlier the giant forward had destroyed Roy Hodgson’s team in a 3-1 win at St James’ Park, and with Hodgson now gone but Liverpool still ailing from both his appointment and more importantly the disastrous, now thankfully past ownership of Tom Hicks and George Gillett, they were about to have their hand forced over joining the annual scramble of January deadline day.
Or at least they thought they had to join it.
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In hindsight the £22.8million signing of Luis Suarez from Ajax, completed earlier that day, would be a perfect bit of compensation for the pain of losing Fernando Torres to Chelsea, also that day, for the eye-watering fee of £50million.
On their own those deals look like those of the modern Liverpool, the one that sold Philippe Coutinho to Barcelona and used that money to bring in Virgil van Dijk and Alisson, keeping the change.
Perhaps this was the beginning of that road.
Until last season’s mad but necessary dash to sign the centre-backs Ozan Kabak and Ben Davies, Suarez and Carroll remained the most recent first-team players Liverpool have brought in on a January deadline day.
Business has always been that bit more serene, and they’ve never quite felt as out of control as they did on that day 11 years ago.
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It has since been confirmed that Suarez was signed to play with Torres, but the ship had sailed for the Spaniard who had seen the likes of Xabi Alonso, Javier Mascherano and crucially Rafael Benitez all depart Liverpool in the previous 18 months, taking chances of success and trophies with them.
Torres’ defection for Chelsea made him Public Enemy No.1 with Reds fans at the time, but the passing of the years have softened that stance significantly.
He has been greeted warmly when he’s returned to Anfield for charity matches or to watch his beloved Atletico Madrid, as he did earlier this season.
There is now more of an understanding about why he left, even if his destination of choice still rankles. Torres’ frequent struggles at Chelsea might have played a large part in softening the blow over the years, but at the time the move felt raw.
That was partly because no-one was quite sure what to expect from Carroll and Suarez, with the burdens already placed on the former and the unknowns around the latter.
It was only 11 years ago, but there was still a level of mystery around the new No.7, with the story of him being banned for seven Dutch league matches for biting an opponent only adding to the intrigue.
“What have we got here?” thought fans, “seems a bit mad.”
If only they knew what was coming.
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And Suarez was Suarez.
His incredible acts with the ball at his feet were quite unlike anything Liverpool fans had seen in the modern era, even from the brilliant Torres whose grace marked him out as a different type of player to the Uruguayan street fighter.
The distasteful and downright despicable incidents were to come, but at that moment Suarez was just a 24-year-old forward from the Dutch league ready to take his game to the next level, and how he did that.
All these years later, Carroll can possibly be viewed as the fall guy for a strike partner he was supposed to be the perfect fit for as he stood there at his unveiling, towering over Suarez and Kenny Dalglish.
He didn’t really know how he’d got there, and in truth he didn’t really want to be there either.
Yet he remains the symbol of Liverpool’s most chaotic January transfer deadline day, when £57.8million was paid out, £50million came back in and world class strikers came and went.
Up in the north-east a cat got a new owner too, as that owner’s bewildered brother took a deep breath and wondered how it came to this.
