Liverpool FC: Andy Carroll's Drinking Not the Only Problem for the Reds

Andy Carroll was curiously absent from the pitch for the first 67 minutes of Liverpool's 1-0 defeat at Britannia Stadium against Stoke City on Saturday. The 22-year-old England international had been a member of Kenny Dalglish's starting XI in each of Liverpool's first two domestic fixtures of the 2011-12 season, but has since been relegated to substitute duty in the Reds' last three.

Not that Carroll has necessarily deserved to start all the way through.

His contributions against Sunderland and Arsenal hardly merited significant playing time, even if the £35 million price tag would suggest otherwise. The emergence of Luis Suarez as the Reds' most lethal goal-scoring threat, if not as one of the better strikers in all the Barclays Premier League, has also forced Dalglish's hand to relegate his most expensive acquisition to the bench.

Of course, if there were ever a time to bring Carroll back into the fold, it would've been against a tough, hard-nosed side like the Potters. Carroll was brought to Anfield in large part for his distinctly British physicality on the pitch, the kind of physicality that Liverpool were lacking and that would have come in handy against Stoke's well-noted thuggery.

Yet, Carroll was held out in favor of Dirk Kuyt for most of the match. Once Carroll finally made it in, the Reds almost instantly embarked on a furious offensive at Stoke's net, sending shot after shot at Asmir Begovic but without success.

Surely, then, Carroll should have started for Liverpool. Surely, such a change would have helped the Reds' chances of overcoming their historical struggles at Britannia that included losses in their last two matches. Liverpool have four points overall in four trips there since the Potters were promoted back to the Premier League in 2008.

So why didn't he play? Could it have been his drinking, of which Fabio Capello, the coach of England's national team, complained recently? Could it be that Carroll's "party boy" ways have hampered his fitness to the point that he can no longer hold down a spot as Liverpool's starting striker?

Dalglish seemed to think not, citing Carroll's knee injury as the reason he underperformed upon arriving on Merseyside last season:

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"Andy wasn't properly fit last year because of a knee injury. We've been very pleased with his level of fitness this year because he's lost that knee injury.

"I think his fitness now would stand up against anybody's and we are delighted with the progress he has made."

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That may be all well and good, but what of Carroll's poor play this season? Has his personal life become a burden on his professional performance? Dalglish was reluctant to speculate on Carroll's behavior:

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"You don't know his lifestyle. Who knows his lifestyle? Andy. I think Andy is wiser than a lot of the people who write about him and I don't think his lifestyle is anything like they'd like it to be to get stories."

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Dalglish may very well be right, which would lead us to one simple, unfortunate conclusion for Kopites: that Andy Carroll just isn't that good, that Dalglish overpaid handsomely to snag him from Newcastle United back in January.

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