Andy Carroll’s record-breaking move to Liverpool in 2011 certainly did not go to plan.

The Reds took a £35m gamble on Carroll after seeing him score 11 Premier League goals for Newcastle during the first half of the 2010/11 campaign, but the big Geordie could not acclimatise at Anfield and went on to score just 11 times in 58 appearances.

Dean Ashton was left bitter over Carroll joining Liverpool

Ashton had been one of the best English strikers in the Premier League during the mid-2000s, but injury plagued him after his move to West Ham in 2005 and he eventually retired in December 2009 having barely played for 18 months.

Clearly, Ashton was in no place to join Liverpool by the time Carroll arrived in 2011, but, as he told the In The Mixer podcast, he felt that had the injury not happened, joining clubs such as the Reds would have become a possibility for him. As a result, he felt Carroll’s move 16 years ago ‘should have been him.’

“I was so bitter, so bitter, because, why me?” he said of his early retirement. “You see other players going on with their careers in terms of, you know some players aren’t really bothered, it was a job to them. It was a dream to me. And when you see and you know that as such, it can be hard.

“It’s not fair on Andy Carroll getting a move to Liverpool and me going, ‘he doesn’t deserve that, that should have been me,’ for example, which is strange thinking, but you can’t help feeling that way when you’re in the moment.”

Having lost against Liverpool in the 2006 FA Cup final, Ashton also admitted that he was jealous of players who had been able to win big trophies while he was completely out of the game.

“What I do think a lot about is what might I have won, especially because I played in an FA Cup final and lost, and having to walk past that trophy and not grab it and kiss it was the worst feeling ever,” he said.

“There’s absolutely a part of me that is jealous of players that get to enjoy that.”