Andy Carroll handed in a transfer request after they turned down Liverpool's £30 million bid. Liverpool confirmed that Carroll would wear the number 9 jersey previously worn by Fernando Torres, who left Anfield for Chelsea on the same evening for £50 million. The transfer made Carroll the eighth overall most expensive footballer at the time, and also the most expensive British footballer of all time. He also became the second most expensive footballer playing for a British club, after Torres. Due to an injury that was sustained while with Newcastle, however, it was announced that Carroll would have to wait some time
Transfer (association football) English record was broken twice in the space of a few weeks, both times by Manchester United, who first signed Dutch striker Ruud van Nistelrooy for £19 million, and then signed Argentine midfielder Juan Sebastián Verón for £28.1 million. A year later, they broke the English record fee again by signing Rio Ferdinand from Leeds United for a fee in the region of £29 million, 11 years after Liverpool had paid a mere tenth of that figure to set an English record transfer fee when they signed Dean Saunders. It took two weeks for the record to be broken when