Is There Room For Sentiment In East London? (Video)

Four days into the January transfer window and there has been very little to get excited about in the Premier League. While the last few years have brought lacklustre windows at this time of year, there is always the hope of some shock swoops.

The lack of transfer activity is evident when Joe Cole's return to boyhood club West Ham United is gathering plenty of column inches and air time.

While there is plenty of romance in a story about a product of the Hammers youth team making his way back to the same patch of east London (via Chelsea, Liverpool and Lille), the fact is Cole isn't the star player he was five years ago.

On leaving Upton Park in 2003 Cole spent 7 years with Chelsea in the club's most successful ever era, making 281 appearances (mostly as a substitute), and looking back now it is easy to say this can be considered the best spell of his career.

At the end of Cole's Chelsea contract came the unsuccessful free transfer to Liverpool. Fans at Anfield will be glad they didn't pay a fee for Cole on top of his ₤90,000 a week wages as under Roy Hodgson, the manager that took Cole to Merseyside, and Brendan Rodgers, Cole failed to provide any telling contributions in a red shirt while Kenny Dalglish made it clear that Cole had no place at Liverpool at all and banished him to French side Lille on a season long loan.

West Ham boss Sam Allardyce has brought in a fans favourite but maybe Cole should have left West Ham fans remembering him in the good old days, not the ineffective 30-plus midfielder he has become.

If nostalgia is the order of the day then I hear Frank Lampard is available at the end of the season...

Sam Jewell

Follow @sw_jewell