Roy Hodgson still waiting for Joe Cole to deliver
Tony Barrett
The depths to which Joe Cole’s Liverpool career has sunk only six months after joining the club have been illustrated again, with Roy Hodgson making it clear that the time has come for the midfield player to start doing his talking on the pitch.
When Cole arrived at Anfield on a free transfer in July, he was described variously as a catalyst for Liverpool’s revival, a deity of football and the best signing of the summer. Since then his stock has plummeted to such an extent that he is struggling to get into a Liverpool team who have fallen below limited expectations.
In his most recent appearance, against Utrecht, Cole was given a role on the left side of Liverpool’s midfield but failed to make any impression on the Europa League tie, prompting those who believe that the 29-year-old is best deployed in a more central position to claim that Hodgson’s tactics were the cause of the problem.
However, the Liverpool manager bristled at that suggestion, arguing that good midfield players should be able to perform regardless of their starting position and telling Cole that he will have to deal with the reality that he may not be able to play in his favoured role, just off the forward.
“He has got to do it on the field of play,” Hodgson said. “Some will say he’s unlucky because he’s not playing in the right position, but I don’t have any truck with that. Joe is a midfield player and what’s the right position for a midfield player?
“Steven Gerrard has played all over midfield for as long as I can remember. I have seen him play left midfield for England, I’ve seen him play centre midfield, as a lone striker, as a second striker, because he is a good football player and knows how to play football.
“Joe has to come to terms with the fact that he has come here after an unsuccessful period at Chelsea with high hopes of taking Liverpool by storm and unfortunately it’s not happened. That’s life. He should have great confidence in his ability as he is a very good footballer. As far as I am concerned, everything he has to say should be said on that patch of green grass.
“He should be convincing me and everyone watching that this is a player who can help Liverpool win things. And I think you couldn’t say that has been the case so far. I haven’t lost faith in him, but you can’t deny the start he wanted has not materialised.
“If he says, ‘Well, I’m not playing in my right position’, then you’d have to ask him what his right position is. If he says the only place he can play is behind the striker then he is limiting his chances of playing here.
“We also have Gerrard and Raúl Meireles who can play in that position and we also have a situation where at the moment quite often we are playing with two strikers.”
Hodgson rubber-stamped Cole’s transfer to Liverpool after it was set up by Christian Purslow, the club’s former managing director. But when asked if he would have pursued the deal had he taken up his managerial post at Anfield earlier, Hodgson’s response was noncommittal.
“It’s a difficult one for me to answer,” he said. “I was involved in the discussion with him, but the initiative and the desire to take Joe did come from Christian perhaps more so than myself because I wasn’t in the position to say these are the players we should be targeting as I hadn’t been offered the job at that point.
“In the conversation with Joe, and I hope he remembers this, I made it clear that while he was a free transfer with a lot of clubs interested in him and I played my part in persuading him it was a good move, I couldn’t promise him a certain position.
“He’s not a player I can really take responsibility for. I’d have to share the responsibility for Joe, less so than [for] people like [Christian] Poulsen, Meireles and [Paul] Konchesky, who are players I was quite happy to bring to the club.”
The dismissal of Rafael Benítez from Inter Milan has prompted speculation that the former Liverpool manager could return to Anfield, but Hodgson is unperturbed, insisting that he was not shocked to see his predecessor linked with the job, even though he could not see any logic to the conjecture.
“It would be surprising [because] if he was the right man for the job then it would have been wiser not to let him go and then bring him back six months later,” Hodgson said. “When you occupy one of the top jobs in the country, it would be very strange if other people were not linked with your job.”
Tony Barrett
The depths to which Joe Cole’s Liverpool career has sunk only six months after joining the club have been illustrated again, with Roy Hodgson making it clear that the time has come for the midfield player to start doing his talking on the pitch.
When Cole arrived at Anfield on a free transfer in July, he was described variously as a catalyst for Liverpool’s revival, a deity of football and the best signing of the summer. Since then his stock has plummeted to such an extent that he is struggling to get into a Liverpool team who have fallen below limited expectations.
In his most recent appearance, against Utrecht, Cole was given a role on the left side of Liverpool’s midfield but failed to make any impression on the Europa League tie, prompting those who believe that the 29-year-old is best deployed in a more central position to claim that Hodgson’s tactics were the cause of the problem.
However, the Liverpool manager bristled at that suggestion, arguing that good midfield players should be able to perform regardless of their starting position and telling Cole that he will have to deal with the reality that he may not be able to play in his favoured role, just off the forward.
“He has got to do it on the field of play,” Hodgson said. “Some will say he’s unlucky because he’s not playing in the right position, but I don’t have any truck with that. Joe is a midfield player and what’s the right position for a midfield player?
“Steven Gerrard has played all over midfield for as long as I can remember. I have seen him play left midfield for England, I’ve seen him play centre midfield, as a lone striker, as a second striker, because he is a good football player and knows how to play football.
“Joe has to come to terms with the fact that he has come here after an unsuccessful period at Chelsea with high hopes of taking Liverpool by storm and unfortunately it’s not happened. That’s life. He should have great confidence in his ability as he is a very good footballer. As far as I am concerned, everything he has to say should be said on that patch of green grass.
“He should be convincing me and everyone watching that this is a player who can help Liverpool win things. And I think you couldn’t say that has been the case so far. I haven’t lost faith in him, but you can’t deny the start he wanted has not materialised.
“If he says, ‘Well, I’m not playing in my right position’, then you’d have to ask him what his right position is. If he says the only place he can play is behind the striker then he is limiting his chances of playing here.
“We also have Gerrard and Raúl Meireles who can play in that position and we also have a situation where at the moment quite often we are playing with two strikers.”
Hodgson rubber-stamped Cole’s transfer to Liverpool after it was set up by Christian Purslow, the club’s former managing director. But when asked if he would have pursued the deal had he taken up his managerial post at Anfield earlier, Hodgson’s response was noncommittal.
“It’s a difficult one for me to answer,” he said. “I was involved in the discussion with him, but the initiative and the desire to take Joe did come from Christian perhaps more so than myself because I wasn’t in the position to say these are the players we should be targeting as I hadn’t been offered the job at that point.
“In the conversation with Joe, and I hope he remembers this, I made it clear that while he was a free transfer with a lot of clubs interested in him and I played my part in persuading him it was a good move, I couldn’t promise him a certain position.
“He’s not a player I can really take responsibility for. I’d have to share the responsibility for Joe, less so than [for] people like [Christian] Poulsen, Meireles and [Paul] Konchesky, who are players I was quite happy to bring to the club.”
The dismissal of Rafael Benítez from Inter Milan has prompted speculation that the former Liverpool manager could return to Anfield, but Hodgson is unperturbed, insisting that he was not shocked to see his predecessor linked with the job, even though he could not see any logic to the conjecture.
“It would be surprising [because] if he was the right man for the job then it would have been wiser not to let him go and then bring him back six months later,” Hodgson said. “When you occupy one of the top jobs in the country, it would be very strange if other people were not linked with your job.”
what a ridiculous thing to say.
He's old school and his methods are based on 35 years of infused science.
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