WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE

Last updated : 11 November 2002 By editor

Alan Smith in The Daily Telegraph

‘For those who may have forgotten, Andy Cole is still around. No longer plying his trade at the sharp end of English football perhaps, when he menacingly prowled penalty areas for Newcastle and Manchester United, but still a threatening presence with Graeme Souness's Blackburn Rovers.

The difference these days, having made his name doing some very brisk business in powerful attacking set-ups, is that Cole can occasionally find himself swimming against the tide with fewer chances to feed off.

When that happens, as it most certainly did against Southampton on Saturday in an atrocious Blackburn display, their worst this season by far, the requirement from any player is to simply dig in to try and make the best of a bad lot.

While very few of Cole's team-mates at St Mary's got anywhere near to achieving that, the striker himself showed that the desire lives on to adhere to the standards set first when I knew him as a youngster at Arsenal, standards that became further ingrained at St James' Park and Old Trafford.

But it wasn't so much the last-gasp equaliser that told the story, when Cole bundled home from close quarters to scandalously steal a point, more his general attitude throughout as he chased, fought and foraged with very little support.

His longstanding friendship with strike partner Dwight Yorke was tested more than once. Yorke, looking a little lethargic, failed comprehensively to get tuned in to the same wavelength as his much sharper accomplice. Miscontrolled passes, the failure to read Cole's instinctive dummies - some exasperated glances pretty much said it all.

For some reason, one that has always escaped this observer, Cole has never received the full recognition that his record deserves. International football, granted, didn't quite work out but his performances at club level can hardly be questioned.’