Cole: Easy for Hodgson to say.

£90,000-a-week for a player who, in the last five years, has featured in his club's starting line-up on average 19 times a season may not seem the bargain of the decade.
Cheaper, you would have thought to, buy out Simon Cowell's latest TV contract, better value to take a meaty bundle of used fivers and one by one shove them down the toilet, less risky to employ Harry Kewell as your medical consultant. But actually Joe Cole's recruitment by Liverpool might well turn out to be the signing of the summer, an indication that despite all visible signs to the contrary the club is not in terminal decline, a timely refutation of the growing sense that the only door for talent at Anfield is the one marked exit.
I have long been an admirer of Cole as a player. I have long believed he is England's lost number ten. Before the World Cup, I could bore for Britain on the tactical requirement to play him behind Wayne Rooney in a free role. In the end, the fact that Fabio Capello paid no heed to the clamour for his introduction to the team probably did him more good than harm. So poor were England in South Africa, the chances are Cole would have been dragged into the morass of mediocrity rather than set the place alight. As his five minutes of action proved, he was better off out of it. Like Owen Hargreaves and Adam Johnson, his was a reputation that could only be enhanced by absence.
The thing about Cole is that he has clearly not been trusted by his managers. Since Claudio Ranieri brought him to Stamford Bridge from West Ham he has never really been unleashed with responsibility. He was forever treated as a wayward kid rather than a man to build a team round. Jose Mourinho preferred to bollock him for not tracking back enough, Carlo Ancelotti patronised him with talk of his skill, but then preceded to forget he was in his squad, while Capello publicly revealed that he thought as a player, Cole had gone backwards in the past couple of years. As a consequence, you could see with Cole's every minute on the pitch he was desperately trying to impress, rather than relax and allow his undoubted ability to speak for itself.
Which is precisely the condition from which Roy Hodgson has achieved so much in the past with players. Danny Murphy was never really trusted to be the kingpin central midfielder by Gerard Houllier at Liverpool, Paul Konchesky wasn't given a decent run at West Ham, wherever he went Bobby Zamora was told yes, he had all the attributes to be a decent centre forward, but was then never gifted the opportunity of a long enough run to prove it. Hodgson made them all players coveted across the country. It wasn't rocket science. You only had to see how he reacted to critique from Fulham fans posted on a website to recognise Zamora is a soul who doesn't much respond to negativity, preferring a spot of encouragement. But then, aren't we all?
Perhaps by dint of the financial circumstances in which he found himself at Fulham, Hodgson was a man who preferred to look for rocks others had discarded, then polish them up into gems. His first signing at Liverpool fits absolutely into that line. Uncle Woy didn't simply sign Cole because his name is a lot easier for him to use in team meetings than that of Albert Riera. For the past five years, Cole has not had the luxury of playing for a manager who signed him. Now he is Hodgson's first statement of intent. With that huge psychological spur behind him, he now has the platform denied him for the last five seasons, when the only evidence we have had of his talent was the occasional flash and cameo, plus John Terry endlessly banging on about how great he was in training.
Now he has the opportunity to step up a gear and prove to the world he is as good a player as many of us believe him to be. Cole has much to be grateful to Hodgson for. As a first signing, the new manager could not have made a more meaningful one.