Soccer-Cursed striker Carroll faces another long lay-off

By Martyn Herman LONDON, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Type the name of West Ham United striker Andy Carroll into any internet search engine and you will be greeted with page after page chronicling various failing parts of his body. You will also find a few more describing those all too rare days when he was fit enough to terrorise defences for club and country. A torn knee ligament, and surgery on Tuesday, means there will be no more of those this season for the man who cost West Ham a club record of around 16 million pounds ($24.63 million) to sign from Liverpool in 2013. Past history suggests Carroll's recovery time will be anything but speedy. "The recovery phase is expected to keep Carroll out for the remainder of the 2014/15 season," a club statement said. It is a familiar tale of woe. When Carroll finally made his move permanent in the summer of 2013, he spent the first half of the season sidelined with a foot injury more commonly associated with ballerinas. On returning he scored twice in 16 appearances. Before the start of this season Carroll injured his ankle on a pre-season tour of New Zealand and needed surgery in the United States that kept him out until November. There have been signs he was returning to the form that persuaded Liverpool to pay Newcastle United 35 million pounds for his services as a replacement for Chelsea-bound Fernando Torres in 2011. He scored twice against Swansea City in a rare display of old-fashioned centre forward play and managed five goals in his 16 appearances this season until his curse struck again. This time an innocuous looking tussle with a Southampton defender in a midweek draw was all it took. "We thought we were there with his fitness but at Liverpool and now Southampton, it's a concern for us all," West Ham manager Sam Allardyce, who had hoped to build a team around the tall Carroll, told the club's website. "Obviously it is very depressing for Andy but he knows the process of recovery. He's knows he has to be very strong." Carroll's bad luck has also cost him. His England career, so promising when he scored a magnificent header against Sweden at Euro 2012, has stalled with others now ahead of him in the pecking order. For West Ham, the transfer money and a reported 90,000 pounds a week in wages works out at around 3.0 million pounds for each of the seven goals he has scored. ($1 = 0.6496 pounds) (Reporting by Martyn Herman; Editing by Amlan Chakraborty)