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He being marched to Liverpool with a gun to his temple like? What don't you understand about a club accepting the bid and saying to Carroll 'we think we'll be better off without you'? You think Carroll's a 19 year old girl who doesn't want to dumped by her boyfriend? Come on. He's one of the hottest properties in British football. He's brash and arrogant. He plays like he has no fear and probably lives his life that way as well. He's not going to give a fuck about Ashley wanting him to leave. He'll say 'fuck you, your loss' which is what any confident person would say, and he'd hand in the transfer request in an instant, feeling good that he'll be better off at a club that Ashley doesn't own. You seem to think that this is all something on FM where the player has only two types of feelings about the club. It's complex and complicated, but it's easily believable that Carroll handed in a transfer request after everything was agreed with Liverpool, and the reasons that he would do that can be one of many, a few of which I've listed. He could actually not enjoy playing for Pardew but still loves the club. Or he doesn't like Ashley. Or this, or that. There are a bunch of reasons but I assure you that everyone will come out of this looking good to the people they care about, and that's why I'm highly suspicious of everything that's been reported today.

Liverpool have actually spent £15m this window and now have a new CM, two new, young strikers and have only lost Torres. They've improved massively.

Yup. Why on earth would Carroll be happy at that? He'll have trouble whenever he comes to Newcastle now. Come on, man. You think that shit is important? You think his mates won't know what actually happened? They won't give him shit. And if you think things like 'playing for your home team' has such a pull over players then you're incredibly, incredibly naive. This is the real world, not some romantic comedy where you follow your heart and hope for the best. Carroll's going to a club which is better than we currently are. He's obviously ambitious, and he wants to win trophies. This is not like Shearer. Shearer signed for us because he thought we would win things. Shearer would have never signed for us if we weren't top 3 at that time. The 'sentimental' stuff is icing on the cake. The cake is the money and the trophies and the glory. You're naive if you think so otherwise. Same with Carroll. He won't mind not having the icing so long as he can still have the cake. You think Carroll's going to mind having to not party in Newcastle? Is Newcastle the only party city in the country? You think his friends and family will cut off all ties with him based on this? Come on, don't be daft.

This means Torres to Chelsea is also done, by the way. There's no way Liverpool will allow Chelsea to pull out of the deal at this stage, so it's done. And you're all incredibly naive if you think that Carroll seriously wanted to leave and that Ashley did all he could to keep him. Incredibly naive.

People think this is FM with all this 'if we accepted a bid why we would he hand in a transfer request'. It's fucking not. Someone from LFC calls up and says 'we'll offer x', we say 'yes', tell them the conditions that Carroll has to say he handed in a transfer request, tell Carroll, Carroll doesn't mind staying or leaving, especailly since he'll be getting a massive and instant raise, so he goes along with it. Lots of non-disclosure agreements are signed, lots of money changes hand and at the end of it, Liverpool can say they got a player that wanted to play for them and Ashley can say that he did all he could do keep Carroll. Everybody's happy, and both sets of fans love their owners more after today.

This Obviously. It couldnt be more blatant. So Carroll will be coming out and telling us that request never happened yes? No. Non-disclosure agreements and money will be the reason why he would never do that. I'm betting that he doesn't mention the transfer request in his press conference, and he doesn't mention it when he's next back at St James'.

We rejected an offer to get a price. It's called negotiating. When we got our price, we were willing to sell him, but Ashley didn't want to alienate the fans, which he would have done for the umpteenth time. So he told Carroll to stick a transfer request in, and now he can say 'look, I rejected a bid and he handed a transfer request in so I just made sure Liverpool paid good money for him'. It's PR, man. You're daft if you think this stuff doesn't happen regularly. Why would Carroll, as a Newcastle fan and a Geordie himself, ever agree to that though? £££ It doesn't make him a bad person and it doesn't mean he wanted to leave the club. Like I said, when the club tacitly accepted the bid, it was like saying 'we'll be better off without you'. Carroll's obviously not going to cry and say he wants to stay, man. He's a confident, young striker who feels like he's king of the world. He's going to say 'fuck you Ashley, I'm off'. He might not even feel like he's deserting the club, but just saying fuck you to the owners. How can you see things as so black and white? It's not 'player wants to stay, player stays'. Things happen. Money talks.

We rejected an offer to get a better price. It's called negotiating. When we got our price, we were willing to sell him, but Ashley didn't want to alienate the fans, which he would have done for the umpteenth time. So he told Carroll to stick a transfer request in, and now he can say 'look, I rejected a bid and he handed a transfer request in so I just made sure Liverpool paid good money for him'. It's PR, man. You're daft if you think this stuff doesn't happen regularly.

Money, man. It still doesn't mean he wanted to leave, but if he knew that the club didn't really want him to stay, I'm sure he would seriously consider leaving. How else would you feel if your club said 'we think we'll be better off if we sold you' which is effectively what accepting a bid is. I'm not blaming him. I'm blaming Ashley for accepting a bid this late in the transfer window. The rest of this is just PR. Ashley's fucked up his PR enough to know that he can't afford to just sell Carroll when the player has said he wanted to stay. That would jeopardise the goodwill that has been generated in the past few months.

There's no reason for Carroll to hand in a transfer request now, man. He signed a new contract a couple of months ago when a whole host of clubs were interested. Even yesterday he insisted that he wanted to stay, knowing how much money he would make at Spurs or Liverpool. Honestly, you're daft if you think Carroll really wanted to go. This is just Ashley playing the game. Carroll will be paid well at Liverpool and might get a decent 'bonus' from us so he's not concerned about alienating the fans here.

It's good PR from Ashley. Everything's been agreed.

Umm, Ashley has probably told Carroll that the only way he'll accept the bid is if Carroll submits a transfer request. It's just PR, man. The fee and wages have been negotiated, so Ashley just wants to make sure he comes out of this looking all right, and obviously Carroll has nothing to lose by doing this because he won't be here anymore.

The key to winning matches is to score goals. It isnt easy for clubs in our position to sign class players in a position like striker that will also go unnoticed by other sides in stronger positions. Strikers are all about stats, if theyre good theyll score goals & get noticed. It isnt the same as players like Enrique or Tiote, nor are many players in the position Ben Arfa was. A player like Bellamy would transform our team. Bellamy was actually more important to us than Shearer during our good years under SBR. I remember we lost our chance at the title when Bellamy's hamstring went against Villa (?). Control the ball, put pressure on your opponents, force some mistakes and you will inevitably score more than you concede. If we sell Carroll, we'll still need two new strikers, but if the money is reinvested in other areas in the team, we wouldn't need to get someone as good as Carroll in for our team to improve.

34 goals in his career and a club has bid £40m for him God, football has gone mad.

The key to winning matches is to have control of the ball. The most obvious way for us to improve would be to get a new RM, CM and a striker who can make runs in the channel. It would be magnificent if we could achieve all of this and keep Carroll, but a bid of £40m is absolutely insane. If our scouting network can come up with a few more gems a la Tiote and Ben Arfa, we'd be a much better team after all the transfers. I still think selling now is a short-sighted decision.

Pardew won't be making the final decision on who we sign, anyway. I think that's clear from the fact that the club stated that the executives would have the final say on all transfers. I think he'll be given a list of players that the scouting network have made based on extensive scouting and he'll be allowed to pick players on that list. The fees and wages would obviously be negotiated by Llambias and co. I don't think Ashley would be dumb enough to allow Pardew to sign whoever he wanted and waste money that we can't afford to waste.

Knowing this, why do you react like such a girl to every twitter update from a journalist?

Rejected Oh man, this is insane

He'll be only be cheaper than Cristiano, Zlatan, Zidane and Kaka. What a list.

Carroll will be more expensive than Nedved, Shevchenko, Vieri, Robinho, Buffon, Villa, Crespo and Figo, who all moved when in their respective primes. Jesus

£40m 5th highest fee ever

Eh? Arsenal were a top team who could recover from losing one good player (who wasn't even their best player at the time). We're a mid-table side losing their best player. Completely different situations. I'm comparing the type of players and the similarities that exist. It wasn't meant to be a direct comparison. We're a mid-table side, which means we have a lot of room to improve, if the money is reinvested well. That's the only reason selling Carroll in the summer is justifiable. I don't know, I have a good feeling about our transfers. It seems that our scourting network is developed and we won't be throwing money at young, overpriced English players or old has-beens looking for a last payday.

This reminds me of when Arsenal sold Anelka way back when. He was young, pace, lethal and looked like he was on top of the world. Real came in with a huge offer and Arsenal accepted. The Arsenal fans went nuts but they recovered to win multiple trophies, Anelka succumbed to the pressures at Real and to his own personal demons and never fulfilled the obvious potential that he had as a 19 year old. Carroll is a striker on top of the world as well, and now Liverpool have come in with a similarly huge offer. It's not the end of the world if we sell him in the summer. Selling him now is a short-sighted decision because we're still 10 points away from safety and anything can happen, so we should reject whatever offer is made today. Let's also not forget that Carroll has had more than his fair share of troubles and it's still not certain that he'll end fulfilling his potential. He could easily continue drinking until 25, losing his fitness and end up becoming just another tall, lumbering striker. £35m is still an insane sum for such an inexperienced striker. I can't believe someone will pay him more than Dzeko, Tevez and Villa (as someone said on the BBC). It's a ridiculous sum.

Point taken, although Terry's only won things because Abramovich has spent a fuckload of money. We're not likely to win things with Carroll because we don't have money to spend. I'm just looking at Arsenal and what they achieved with foreigners, which is why I said 'being local is irrelevant'. I'm also looking at Man Utd now and see the lack of locals in their team, and then you look at Chelsea and Spurs and realise that they don't really have any locals in their teams either. It's a matter of pride to have locals in the team, of course, but I'd rather we improved (which we really have a lot of room to do) won things, man. Who's to say we won't have money in a years time once we are settled back in the premiership. General wage inflation, having a bigger squad, Ashley looking to recoup some losses. I see more reason and evidence that we'll still have fuck all to spend, rather than reason and evidence that we'll have £20m+ net to spend.