If Andy Carroll is worth £35 million, Messi must be worth £1 billion

Andy Carroll got his first taste of European football in the AXA Stadium against FC Braga and the style of football was a million miles away from the delights that Messi & Co treated us to on Tuesday night and was more akin to the Dog & Bull on the Rec on a Sunday morning.

Liverpool are a club that is steeped in tradition. They have always reminded the opposition of their impressive haul of trophies and they are still living off that memory to this day. Liverpool are also linked to the pass & move philosophy, something that they have shifted away form in recent times. The song, made famous by John Barnes et al, could not be further from the truth. How he must be spinning in his Mars Bars.

Kyrgiakos and Carragher, even the usually more stylish Reina, resorted to the long ball tactic that is so common in the English game. More technically able players such as Meireles and Cole were reduced to bystanders feeding off the scraps that Carroll gave them. The game changed into one that would look better on an American football field. Every ball that was fed into the strikers were aimed in the air. As was seen the night before at White Hart Lane, more stylish and comfortable CBs can deal with such pressures by leaning in or dropping off the striker and clearing up the knock downs. The Braga centre midfielders left the Liverpool midfield alone and looked more to Carroll as he flicked on and knocked down the 80m punts from the back.

Liverpool looked like a Stoke team that have struggled to score a goal from open play all season and increasingly look to set plays for them to score goals.

If this is the way that Liverpool are going to play with Carroll in the side then players such as Meireles and the ever impressive Suarez will be wasted. Surely Andy Carroll must see himself as more than a player just to knock the ball on. At the moment he looks more like a poor man's Alan Shearer, elbows and all! No doubt the British media will continue to buidl him up, rubbing their hands with anticipation that they will knock him down in a few months time.