Injury woe for ‘gutted’ Carroll
A first-minute strike from West Ham skipper Kevin Nolan was followed by goals from Winston Reid and Matt Taylor to sew up a 3-0 victory over the Hammers before half-time on Saturday.
Fulham’s defenders were given a torrid afternoon by Carroll, who was later substituted due to a hamstring injury which led him to pull out of Roy Hodgson’s squad for the back-to-back qualifiers against Moldova and Ukraine.
Allardyce believes Carroll will be an England mainstay in the future despite his absence on this occasion.
“We will just have to pray that it is not too severe,” he said.
“It looks like a hamstring which is obviously the most disappointing thing from today.
“We were ready to bring him off and unfortunately on that last jump he got hit by (Brede) Hangeland and that twisted his body and pulled his hamstring by the looks of it.
“He is just so gutted because he has got injured and he can’t go to England, that is why he is most disappointed because he wanted to get off there.
“We are going to play him and hopefully he will play every week for us and score goals and obviously Roy (Hodgson) is going to pick him — he wants to do well for us and he wants to do well for England.”
Hangeland, 31, was hoping to deal with the aerial threat of Carroll but admitted the poor start meant an improved second-half performance counted for nothing.
“It was the worst possible start and we gave ourselves a big mountain to climb; too big.
“We lost the game in the first half and even though we improved in the second half there was too much work to do.”
Fulham boss Martin Jol praised the impact of new signing Dimitar Berbatov after his introduction as a half-time substitute and Hangeland was also impressed.
“He showed what we knew,” he said.
“He is a quality player and we are really happy to have him on board and look forward to him helping us out.”
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