Very interesting article
TONY BARRETT
At lunchtime on Saturday, April 3, 2010, Joe Cole scored a famous backheel at Old Trafford that helped Chelsea towards their last Premier League title and earned him a place in the folklore of the club.
Even when the ball was making its way into Edwin van der Saar’s goal through the legs of Patrice Evra, though, it had already become clear that Cole’s future lay away from Stamford Bridge regardless of any heroics against Manchester United.
Contract talks had long since become protracted with Chelsea no longer convinced of his worth to the club following a serious knee injury and, according to reports at the time, the club baulked at Cole’s demand for a pay increase that would have taken his weekly wage from £80,000 to £100,000. However, there was someone in football who was willing to offer the England international that kind of deal though and in the minutes that followed Cole’s famous backheel he sent text messages boasting of how he was going to make Cole a Liverpool player.
That man was Christian Purslow, Liverpool’s then chief executive, who accompanied the messages he sent with a request for the information to go no further or else the deal would be jeopardised. So clandestine was Operation Joe Cole that even Rafael Benitez, the then Liverpool manager, was not aware of it.
Benitez had already made his feelings clear on Cole, in public as well. Prior to Liverpool’s defeat by Arsenal at the Emirates on February 10, 2010, the Spaniard had held talks with Purslow at London’s Melia White House Hotel with the pair discussing potential transfer targets for the following summer.
Having sold Robbie Keane the previous winter and being left with only the increasingly injury-prone Fernando Torres and the unproven David Ngog as frontline attackers, Benitez made it plain that his priority when the transfer window opened was to sign a forward. Purslow told Benitez that he had a better idea – Cole was likely to become available in the summer and better still he would be on a free transfer.
Benitez’s angry reaction was such that Purslow was left in no uncertain terms that his manager would not even consider the proposed move. So volcanic was it that guests staying at the luxury hotel were left stunned by the exchange that took place in a reception area that was also open to the public.
As far as Benitez was concerned, if a free transfer was the best that Liverpool – then struggling under the weight of the debts piled onto the club by Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr – could do then the only position he wanted filling was in attack. His suggestion was to move for Marouane Chamakh who was himself set to become available on a free transfer four months later.
Purslow disagreed with his manager, and with the assessment of the likes of Jose Mourinho, Fabio Capello and Carlo Ancelotti, who all doubted Cole's ongoing ability to cut it at a big club, and continued to pursue the former West Ham United player. Chamakh, meanwhile, joined Arsenal where he remains despite a less than productive spell that seems destined to come to an end as soon as Arsene Wenger can find a new home for the Moroccan.
A similar situation is unfolding at Anfield where Brendan Rodgers has inherited a player who has been taken off injured in the two competitive matches in which he has featured in for his new manager. Rodgers would like to offload Cole but the problem is there isn’t much of a market for a player who has shown precious little to justify Liverpool’s decision to sign him and who, a moderately successful season on loan at Lille notwithstanding, has thus far failed to disprove the opinion of the Chelsea hierarchy that he was past his best.
Even those negatives, though, could probably be overcome if he was not earning astronomical wages and herein lies the problem. Depending on who you listen to, Cole is being paid anything between £90,000-£110,000 by Liverpool every single week. Over the course of the four-year contract he signed when joining the club in July 2010, that equates to a minimum of £18,720,000. In return, Cole has started just nine league games and scored only two goals.
It is madhouse economics and during a period when Liverpool, who recently paid off Alberto Aquilani just to get the Italian (a £17 million fee followed by weekly wages of £80,000) off their books, are striving desperately to get their finances in order, Cole’s nine-minute cameo at West Bromwich Albion at the weekend could not have been more badly timed.
If the sight of Cole clutching his hamstring shortly after coming off the bench was telling, then even more so was the reaction of his manager when the 30-year-old indicated that he was unsure whether or not he could continue. Unlike Cole, Rodgers had no doubts and replaced him immediately with the out-of-favour Andy Carroll.
The injury means Cole could now be out for the next four weeks, a layoff that would mean the midfield player will only be fit for action once the transfer window has closed. In the meantime, Rodgers is likely to be imploring his physiotherapy team to work some magic, more out of a desire to stand at least an outside chance of moving Cole and his wages on than out of a belief that he can become the first Liverpool manager to extract value for money from him on the pitch.
None of this is the fault of Cole. He merely did what any professional would do when offered such a lucrative contract after realising that his future lay elsewhere. He arrived at Liverpool with the best of intentions and his professionalism and value as a team-mate has never been in question even though his worth to the team and value for money quite clearly are.
In some ways, albeit not in a financial sense, Cole is a victim in all this. His career is stagnating to an alarming extent, so much so that his name is not even mentioned in dispatches when England squads are mentioned. He moved to the wrong club at the wrong time and now appears trapped there by a contract that makes potential buyers run a mile. For someone who has always lived for football and for the joy of playing the game that is a tragedy, even if it is an extortionately well remunerated one.
Somehow, Cole and Liverpool need to be put out of their mutual misery. The past two years have shown that they are not good for one another and Rodgers is now the third Liverpool manager, following on from Roy Hodgson and Kenny Dalglish, who is struggling to find a use for him.
Should Rodgers manage to add to his squad before the transfer window closes at the end of this month then it is almost inconceivable that he will be keen for Cole to remain but for a parting of the ways to occur one of two things must happen. Either Cole must accept that his Liverpool career is over and look for a new club in the knowledge that wherever he goes he will have to accept a significant pay cut, or else Liverpool will have to come up with a pay off to help ease him through the Shankly Gates.
Whatever happens, that backheel at Old Trafford must be starting to feel like it happened in another lifetime for Joe Cole.
