West Ham striker Andy Carroll has revealed that he is sick of people joking about his injury problems.
The 29-year-old, on a reported £90k-a-week, has suffered with absences throughout his career, and has picked up 12 different complaints during his five years with the Hammers.
Most recently, he was ruled out from July until November with an ankle injury that required surgery.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, the target man said: “I honestly don’t know what I’ve done in my life to get the s*** I get.
“It’s unbelievable. I get some stick for everything I do. It’s annoying.
“It’s stupid things, like I went to Lapland UK. I’m standing there with the kids. Someone skates over, ‘Lovely to meet you… don’t be getting on the ice, I don’t want you falling over and getting injured’. Everywhere I go it’s the same b*******.”
OPINION
It’s easy to see Carroll as a walking sick note and forget that he has ambitions and feelings. The Geordie striker has endured a terrible run of injuries during his career and must look back on his time on the treatment table with a lot of regret. Realistically, his England career was stunted before it properly began, and in recent years, his appearances for West Ham have been intermittent and his impact dulled. Hopefully, for his sake and the club’s, now that he’s back he can stay fit and be the nuisance player that he can be so effectively for the Hammers. With Javier Hernandez firing and Marko Arnautovic and Felipe Anderson providing the service, Carroll could be a very important player for the Irons as they bid to climb the Premier League table and establish themselves as a European contender. The concern will be that if he can’t stay fit, how many more chances will he get?