News that Newcastle manager Alan Pardew wants to take Andy Carroll back to St James Park certainly got my attention, not least because his loan period at my former club, West Ham, might be cut short in order to facilitate the move during the transfer window.The £35 million fee Liverpool paid for him less than two years ago as a replacement for Fernando Torres who left Anfield for Stamford Bridge for an even bigger fee is hanging around Carroll’s neck like a 50lb weight. With a fee like that the expectations are high and the fact that it hasn’t work out for the England striker is only adding to the pressure.It’s hard to say what a player is worth. At the time of going to Liverpool he was scoring goals and lots of times when you are scoring goals your stock goes up. Lots of times it also depends on what sort of agent you’ve got, whether they are going to work with you and make you be patient and learn your craft properly. If you’re got the wrong person advising you, of course that sort of stuff is going to happen. My advice to any young fella today is to make sure you get an agent who understands what’s going on.I think Andy Carroll has some good qualities. He’s a big strong fella, very good in the air and a typical English-style centre forward and I don’t think he got the service at Liverpool that he got at Newcastle. They knew he was a good header of the ball and would put balls into the box and I don’t think Liverpool did that. Like I told people in the past, if you look at Liverpool ever since I’ve known about them, they have always had a big fella and little fella playing together.They can go back to Roger Hunt, the big one and Ian St John, the little fella, in the 1960s and after that John Toshack and Kevin Keegan. They were good players and got good service from two brilliant wingers, Ian Callaghan and Peter Thompson. They’ve always had wingers but for big Andy Carroll he wasn’t able to get that service. If they had, I think he would have scored more goals because he’s a good header of the ball.It would be nice if West Ham could sign him but £35 million is a lot of money, even though Liverpool aren’t likely to get that for him.I just hope he is able to start scoring goals because he has proven he can do it and we have one or two wingers who could deliver good service to him. He goes back to Newcastle tomorrow still looking for his first West Ham goal. I think it’s only a matter of time before he gets on the end of things and ends up turning it around.Newcastle have Papiss Cisse and Demba Ba right now so is he even going to get a game if he goes back there? That’s something he’s going to need to weigh up and if I were him it would be something I would look at. He wants to be playing week in and week out and that was something at Liverpool that he didn’t like.The Premier League tables are starting to tell a story but it is still too early to make predictions.It is nice to see West Ham in mid-table but I wouldn’t take too much for granted and say who is going to go down because you just need to string a certain amount of wins together and you are out of the bottom three. I remember one year West Ham were in relegation problems and went for an extended period where they didn’t lose any games and were able to get out of it. I think we went to Manchester United and beat them and stayed up that year.The manager has made some good buys and that makes a big difference, bringing in players who can play a bit. Everton have done very well this year, they are in fourth position and could be higher and I like the way Swansea have played also.The team that gives me pleasure to watch at times is Wigan. They knock the ball around superbly and to me that’s the way soccer should be played.They are always tipped to go down but their manager Roberto Martinez has done a fantastic job and is probably one of the best managers in England right now.