Let’s cast our minds back to the centre-halves against whom Andy Carroll has come up in the past.
Nemanja Vidic, Jamie Carragher, John Terry, Rio Ferdinand, Laurent Koscielny… the big man has faced his fare share of tough defenders but he considered them easier to compete with than a rather unexpected pair.
Carroll dropped two surprise names when asked for his toughest ever opponent during a chat with Jamie Redknapp for the Daily Mail.
“Gary Cahill. Timing, reading, good leap, very good,” Carroll unexpectedly answered.
And even more surprising than the Cahill revelation is Carroll’s assertion that he found Liverpool’s Lucas, a midfielder who is typically only used in defence in case of emergencies, a nightmare to deal with.
“And Liverpool’s Lucas Leiva. Oh my God. He played centre-half against us. I don’t know what it was,” the West Ham centre-forward continued.
“Every time I went for the ball he gave me a little nudge, the referee was never going to give a foul and I never wanted a foul, but he did me every time. Just judging me so well and knocking me off balance. I couldn’t play against him.”
It seems footballers always go against popular expectations when they are asked to name their most difficult opponents.
Rather than name Fernando Torres as the trickiest attacker he had to deal with, Manchester United legend Nemanja Vidic surprisingly proclaimed that “(Didier) Drogba was tougher!”
Cristiano Ronaldo, meanwhile, insists that he found Ashley Cole the toughest opponent to date which came as a shock to many fans.
