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Liverpool finally moves on from Andy Carroll

Liverpool finally cut ties with striker Andy Carroll on Thursday, sending him to West Ham in a season-long loan deal.

The Hammers got Carroll, who Liverpool paid £35 million for in January of 2011, for a £1.5 million loan fee and will have to pay his £80,000 per week wage bill. If they avoid relegation this year, they will owe Liverpool an additional £18 million to make the move permanent.

“It is very simple: the club made a monumental investment in big Andy and at this moment in time he’s not playing,” Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers told The Guardian. “He made it very clear from when we first met in the summer that he wants to play games and obviously (with the transfer window closing on Friday) this is the last chance for him to go and do that. Then obviously we can assess it over the course of the next six months or a season. So that’s it.”

While that might be “it,” it is also a far cry from the £17 million that Liverpool was hoping to gain in a transfer fee. It certainly didn’t help that everyone knew that Carroll’s days were over at Anfield, meaning Liverpool wasn’t dealing from a position of strength. Especially when you are trying to sell someone who has six goals and two assists in 44 Premier League games.

Liverpool has been linked for weeks to Fulham’s Clint Dempsey, and recently Arsenal’s Theo Walcott and Chelsea’s Daniel Sturridge have been named as possible transfer targets.

It’s hard to see how the team can pull off a deal for one of them, however, considering the fact that they received so little for Carroll. They freed up his salary slot, but Dempsey or Walcott are going to cost a lot more than £1.5 million. There are signs that the club will move Charlie Adam (another disappointing signing) and Jay Spearing, which would help.

Of course, with all the money that John Henry and Fenway Sports Group saved with the recent trade of Adrian Gonzalez and Josh Beckett, maybe there is some spare cash laying around.

Either way, we will know soon, as the transfer window is soon to close.

(Photo by Getty Images)