What sort of reception will Carroll and Enrique get?

I'm not one for really bothering with former players if truth be told.

To me they are just commodities who come and go, almost at will. I don't get why other people think differently either.

Anyway, I'll stop digressing. As I said, I don't usually look at former players at all, but this one seems to be all over the media so I'll run with it and see what everyone else thinks about it.

The subject at hand is of course the weekend encounter with Liverpool and the first return to St James' Park for the likes of Jose Enrique and Andy Carroll.

Much is being made of the reception these former favourites will get on their return to the club which effectively made them in England and gave Liverpool a reason to splash out a rather astonishing estimated £41 million on the pair. In fact Kenny Dalglish has already suggested that the pair may get a bit of stick upon their return.

Dalglish said in his pre-match press conference: "I'm not sure Andy will get abuse because what happened was outside his control. It's up to them what they want to do. They pay their entrance money and, if they want to give him stick, they will give him stick. But I don't think he ever did anything other than give of his best for Newcastle, and then they got £35m into the bargain as well. That's not bad, is it?

"I think Andy will be excited about going back. It's the club he supported as a boy, the club that introduced him and gave him his chance in professional football. So I think he will be excited about it as a local boy and will be looking forward to the game. José Enrique had a few years up there too, and he will be looking forward to it as well."

I'm just wondering what kind of reception you guys have planned for our former number nine, and our former number three come to think of it.

Will it be a hostile one? Will it be a warm one? Will one player get a barracking while the other gets off lightly?

The cameras will be on Carroll and watching the reception he gets, but for me he isn't the one that I'm most disappointed in. I've never bought this "forced out" baloney. Not in a million years can you force a player out of a club if they have a contract. If it could be done do you think we would STILL have Xisco and Alan Smith on our payroll?

Nope.

Carroll left his boyhood club for his own reasons. Whether that be money or or a better chance of Europe or a better shot at winning a trophy, who knows. He had his reasons and off he went,but most importantly he went quietly and we've not heard a peep out of him since. He hasn't slagged off the club, the manager, the owners or anything like that.

Jose Enrique is a completely different kettle of fish however. The sneaky Spaniard played the game all along and knew he was off for months. It was evident in his performances for us, and the Blackpool away game sticks firmly in the mind when I look back on it.

He wanted to talk about a new deal in the summer so he told us. He wanted to wait until he knew we were safe before sitting down to discuss things, yet it seems he had no intention of doing so all along and he left for Liverpool after a rather public outburst on Twitter where he criticised the club, its policies, and its lack of ambition - a lack of ambition that sees his former club eight points clear of his current employers ahead of the game on Sunday.

You see when it comes to reactions from the crowd, not everything is as black and white as it seems and, from my perspective anyway, the media are barking up the wrong tree when it comes to looking for a reaction.

It's not Carroll I'll be barracking, it's the slimy Spaniard!