Kevin Nolan: “My wife was so welcoming with him in letting him stay. Of course I did have to ring her first just to ask if it’s okay and she was fine, that’s just the kind of people we are and Andy was very grateful for that.
“Andy being a young lad, he had his family there for him but sometimes you need other people as well.
“Even now in Liverpool, even though he feels detached from his family, he knows if he needs it he’s got someone to go and lean on.
“My dad and my mum and all my family are there for him.
“It’s been nice getting to know his mum and dad because they try to come to as many games at St James’ because they’re Newcastle fans.
“It’s going to be weird playing against him, but we’ve only known each other a couple of years even though we’re really good mates, best mates and we speak to each other virtually every day,” he reflects.
“We’re both professionals with jobs to do.
“Afterwards we’ll see each other, we’ll probably go out for a bit of lunch and a quiet night afterwards.
“It’ll hit him when he sees Newcastle, the team he grew up with and loved for so long, and his team, Liverpool, are playing against them. If he does play he’ll try and do his best and it’s up to us to deal with that.”
“We’re not just a one-man band.
“We’ve got a core of a team which has played the majority of the season and we’ve done really well. We’ve had a few hitches and glitches here and there and that’s something we’ve got to work on for next season.
“It (Carroll’s sale) was for the best for the club, it’s worked out for us better that Andy has gone, although we’d love to have him still here. If he was we’d probably have a few more points on the board and would probably be able to build a team which is going to be great around him.
“We’d probably have taken £10m for him the season before or £4m before we got relegated.
“It just shows what he’s done in a short space of time but now he’s got a new chapter in his life and we’ve got a lot of money to spend, and I’m sure the owners will.
“£35m – come on, if you can get four or five players in for that it works the best way you can possibly think of.
“There’s not many clubs outside the top four, five who’ve spent really big in the last few windows, Liverpool only did because they let (Fernando) Torres go. The money we got was astronomical.”
