Hughton defends stance over Carroll.
Posted on November 18th, 2010 | 110 Comments |
Carroll’s groin has been a major point talking this week after the striker looked like he could miss the opportunity to make his England debut against France last night.
The concerns from the club appeared to be unfounded, and Andy went on to make his debut anyway amid reports of the club contacting the FA via e-mail.
Basically, the rumour suggested that Newcastle had asked the The FA for Carroll to be withdrawn from the squad for fear of aggravating the groin injury that he picked up against Fulham, although with no confirmation on that from the club you could be forgiven for being a tad sceptical and putting it down to yet more press rumour-mongering.
But this time it appears that the press were right, and there was indeed some contact between Newcastle and The FA.
“There was concern, that is true. The unfortunate bit for us was that it made the papers,” Hughton told The Chronicle.
“The lines of communication between us and the FA were correct, but it got out. Both parties are very happy with how we conducted ourselves.”
“When we assessed Andy on Sunday, it looked like he wouldn’t be able to play. We sent him down to England and over the two or three days there was enough of a recovery to play.”
Newcastle were right to be concerned of course, as Carroll is their player and would have been a huge miss had he aggravated the injury further, but Newcastle should have also listened to the England medical team, who tested Carroll’s fitness several times before the match. At the end of the day they will be duty bound to look after the welfare of the player, and if there was any hint of trouble I would suggest that Carroll would have been left out.
Still, it’s all kind of irrelevant now as Carroll looks to be unscathed after playing 73 minutes at Wembley Stadium last night. Hughton added:
“We’ll assess Andy today and it looks like he got through okay. We’re aware of the problem he had. Hopefully he is available for the weekend.
So all is well then, or is it? I guess we’ll have to wait until Saturday to see whather or not Carroll makes the team against Bolton.
Hopefully he will!
CH, as usual, got it about right. The FA, as usual, showed what a load of arrogant, money-grabbing bastids who really don’t give s stuff about who takes their risks while they try to defend their own jobs and fill their own pockets.
We got lucky. Avatar did great and won lots of fans. CH has said his bit; point made.
2-1 against Bolton, please lads.