My first reaction was: “No way!”. When I looked at it objectively, there were things to consider here. Joe Cole is a scintillating player. I’d love to have players like him who can be very inimitably special. When he is in spirits, he can be great to watch and is truly a match winner. I still remember that goal he scored against Arsenal at Highbury. For such a small guy, he bulldozed that Arsenal defender and ran with the ball for an one-on-one with Lehmann who could only watch the ball fly past him. That was one of my favourite goals by Joe Cole. And then that goal against Man Utd at Stamford Bridge where he made Ferdinand and company look like complete idiots. And that one against Everton last season. And many more.

Of course, along with his spells of magic he also had his spells of injuries and inconsistency. As much as he has thrilled me, he has been one player who has frustrated me very much. It’s because he does these unbelievable stuff once in a while, he hypes up expectations on himself and then comes with a very mundane 90 minutes next week. He’s now getting into a crucial period of his Chelsea career. He could have been overshadowed by Robben and Duff but they are gone. For a long period, Joe Cole was the only decent winger we had. That was the period he must have stamped his authority. But he was injured and when he was not, he was very good but not really outstanding. He was our player of the season of 07-08, wasn’t he? It must have been a tough choice last season because none of them actually deserved the ‘player of the season’ award. None of them were consistent, including Joe Cole.

Until now, he’s got away with his inconsistency but it’s gonna be a lot tougher going forward. If not for Joe Cole, I don’t see Scolari ever choose to play 4-3-3. So if Joe Cole does not impress, we choose a more convenient system to get the best out of our ultra strong midfield. Also, the tag of ‘most skillful Chelsea player’ has gone the moment Deco arrived. Deco is simply the master who has a lot to offer to players like Joe Cole. With talks of Robinho and Kaka, Joe Cole won’t even be in the top three skillful players at Chelsea. His USP is gone. If he is not delivering the goods, he’s gonna see a lot of bench time.

This season in premier league, you can have 7 players on the bench, which helps Chelsea more than any other team in England. Joe Cole could be one of them. In our opinion poll yesterday, a vast majority of us have voted that Joe Cole would be the one to lose his place because of Deco’s arrival. Joe Cole may not like to sit in the bench for too long. He is a type of player who loves to play football, may be even at the cost of a pay cut. When Aston Villa comes calling, a couple of things must cross his mind. One is about how secure his first team place is, in Chelsea. With more key signings to happen this month, Joe Cole could soon be a full time benchwarmer. The second is, the role that he can play at Aston Villa. He could be a real star there. They could adore him. He could play every single match, all 90 minutes.

Here is the view of a Villa fan, from the avfcblog:

Joe Cole’s a right footed player who prefers to play on the left. But like Ashley, he can play on both sides just as well. Would be our greatest signing ever I reckon, but it would never happen for several reasons -

1. He’s already getting first team football (he was their most used player last season)
2. He’s already a fully established England international and doesn’t really stand any chance of losing that while he’s at Chelsea, first team or not
3. We’d have to pay through the nose for him. I don’t have a problem with that personally, I’d pay £20m and give him £80k a week myself. Would MON though?
4. Scolari doesn’t seem to want to sell any of his fringe players at the moment. If he doesn’t want to sell SWP, he sure as hell isn’t going to want to sell a far superior player in Joe Cole.
5. We’re Aston Villa. He’s playing for Chelsea. Do the math!

If you ask me, I’ll bite the bullet and say let him go, if and only if he’s gonna fetch us more than £20 million. If you ask him, he might say that he wants to stay at Chelsea and fight for his place. That’s not a bad option for him. Currently, he may not have a place in the first team but how long will we go before our first injury. How much ever you don’t want to think about it, injuries do happen. With team dominated by late 20s and early 30s, injuries are unavoidable. Outside of my starting eleven, the next best option I have is Joe Cole. And finally, who knows what Scolari has in his mind for Joe Cole. If Scolari is unwilling to let go SWP, Pizarro and the like, how can we expect him to release Joe Cole.

This could all be just rumours. But it’s there in all papers, in all blogs and especially the Villa blogs and hence cannot simply be ignored. Martin O Neill seems to have made a bid of £17.5 million. The Robinho deal could have a big say on this one. I expect Chelsea to keep the cards close to their chest. I don’t think anyone would even talk about this at Chelsea. Joe Cole is a fans’ favourite at Stamford Bridge and he is one player, along with John Terry, who has simply not looked elsewhere for many seasons now. We’ll keep a close tab on this story. Okay then, time for another poll.

Where will Chelsea end up this season?

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Moving on to more transfer rumours, Hull City and Stoke are watching Pizarro. He is being valued in the region of 4 million pounds and considered an expensive solution. It’s taken just one season from him to go from Chelsea to Hull City. No disrespect to them but they did not end runners-up in premier league and champions league last season, Chelsea did. If Scolari sees potential in di Santo and also thinks he’ll live up to that, Pizarro could be on his way out. Meanwhile, Malouda has killed the continued interest from Roma insisting that he wants to stay at Chelsea.

That’s it for now. Catch you soon!