Joe Cole and Liverpool are the perfect match: once-quite-good English institutions now locked in a terminal decline.
Desperately trying to find something to break the cabin fever after a summer spent looking enviously at the World Cup on terrestrial channels, the Sky Sports News presenters were bigging this one up on Monday afternoon.
The famous yellow ticker has carried all manner of non-news this summer – my personal favourite was “England squad numbers announced†– but it was back doing what it does best today, cranking into gear for a big transfer story involving one of England’s biggest clubs.
Joe Cole! Free transfer! Ninety thousand pounds a week! Four-year deal!
Before I go on, I must point out that the terms “big transfer story†and “one of England’s biggest clubs†could be taking liberties with the truth, given that (a) Cole arrives at Anfield on a free transfer having been deemed surplus to requirements at Chelsea, and (b) Liverpool’s status as one of the top clubs in the land is endangered by the never-the-twain combo of mounting debts and dwindling revenues.
Now, back to Cole, and back to Sky Sports News. The Liverpool fans were contacting the studio “in their droves”, we were told, to fawn over a signing which ensured that star men such as Fernando Torres and Steven Gerrard would extend their stay at the club.
Surely the bombastic Sky guys were making this stuff up. Because if it’s true, and the tone of the texts and emails from Liverpool supporters is reflective of the majority of the club’s fans, then surely Liverpool have slipped even further than we thought.
If the arrival of a half-crocked free-transfer has-been is an accurate measure of Liverpool’s ambitions, then the club’s fans, from whom the response to the news of Cole’s arrival has been straw-clutchingly optimistic, should be worried.
Cole has started less than half of Chelsea’s Premier League games in each of the past two seasons. Should he maintain that average of 14 league starts next season, on a pro rata basis of his £90,000-a-week salary he would cost approximately £335,000 each time he’s named in the Reds team for a Premier League fixture.
Nice work if you can get it, but there must be some doubt about whether Cole can manage even that. Given that two respected Italian managers, Carlo Ancelotti and Fabio Capello, have been so unconvinced by his wellbeing that each has effectively cast him aside within the past two months, is it not possible, or even likely, that Cole’s best days are long since gone?
This type of transfer – a downwardly mobile once-quite-good international on a free – is routine for Fulham or Everton or Aston Villa. It’s upper-mid-table stuff. Which, where Liverpool are concerned, could be just about right.
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