Not many regret joining Liverpool – but one ex-player has spoken about how he made the wrong choice
(Image credit: Michael Regan/Getty Images)
Former Premier League star Joe Cole has opened up on his time at Liverpool, claiming that he regrets ever making the move to Anfield.
The three-time Premier League winner spent seven seasons at Chelsea before making the move to the Reds in 2010.
At the time, Tottenham were keen on Cole’s services, but he opted for a switch to Merseyside. It came at a point in his career where injuries were hindering him, something that was partially the reason why he left Stamford Bridge after such a successful stint there.
It didn't work out for Joe Cole on Merseyside (Image credit: Getty Images)
But Cole has revealed how he regrets making a transfer to Liverpool over other options.
“I'd done my knee and that was probably the start of the end of my career because I was never the same player after that,” he told former teammate John Obi Mikel on The Obi One podcast.
“Something clicked and I thought to myself, ‘I’m never going to get back to the player I was. I’ve got to leave’. Because I didn’t want to finish my Chelsea career just sitting there on the injury table.”
“I had a choice between Liverpool or Spurs because Arsenal pulled out – I just couldn’t go to Spurs,” he added. “It would have made sense, Harry Redknapp was the manager, they had a good team, I lived in London, half my pals are Spurs fans. I just couldn’t do it.
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Roy Hodgson signed Cole at Anfield (Image credit: PA Images)
“Liverpool is a great club. It didn’t work for me there but it is a fantastic club. But if I could have my time again, I would probably go abroad, somewhere hot, because playing in the heat actually helped my knee.”
Roy Hodgson, Liverpool's then-manager, brought Cole in. Receiving a weekly salary of £90,000, Cole became part of a series of signings that, regrettably, failed to meet expectations at Anfield. Over the course of three years, Cole donned the Liverpool shirt 42 times across various competitions, managing to find the back of the net five times.
As his career entered its twilight years of his carer, Cole embarked on further ventures with spells at Aston Villa, Coventry, and a stint in Major League Soccer (MLS) with the Tampa Bay Rowdies before ultimately deciding to retire from professional football.
Jacque Talbot is a freelance football journalist who predominantly specialises in transfer stories and exclusives. He began his career in 2016 covering the world-renowned Sandbach United, of North West Counties fame, before earning a spot on the sports desks of national papers, where he bounced between several outlets such as Sportbible, the Express, Mirror, and Daily Star. An NCTJ graduate of the News Associates who swapped investigative journalism in the Costa del Sol for football reporting in Northern England, he first wrote for FourFourTwo in December 2023.
