Ashley Cole is ready to move in to management a few months after being made assistant manager of the England u21s.
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Ashley Cole hung up his boots as a player in 2019 and, after a short break, started coaching under Frank Lampard who was manager of the Rams at the time.
When Lampard moved to Chelsea, Cole went with him, but when Frank was sacked, Cole stayed at the Bridge.
In July, he was named assistant manager for the England u21s and he feels he is now ready to move into full-time management, which will be interesting for Arsenal fans, given their strained relationship with their former defender.
Cole told the media: “I’ve lived and breathed football since I was 7 and I don’t think going into coaching or management should scare anyone.
“It’s important that I take it seriously. You’ve got to have faith and belief in what you are preaching and the philosophy and style in what you want to portray as a group or club, and I don’t feel scared to go into that.
“I am raring to go and waiting for my opportunity, making sure I’m ready to go in prepared.
“I felt it after I went to LA Galaxy (in 2016) and got a deeper role, trying to be that leader in the dressing room but also take sessions, sit in on meetings and seeing the impact I had on the younger players.
“I felt I had to give something back.
“Coming back to Chelsea was my opportunity to do that.
“Everybody speaks about having that year off (after retirement) to relax and sit on the beach. I actually got bored after two weeks and missed being on the grass.
“Is there enough opportunities for black coaches? It’s always going to be questioned. We have to just make sure we’re ready to deliver. I’ve got a long way to go, a lot of learning to do. The timing has to be right.
“I just need to make sure I’m ready for whatever job, whatever league. I need to be ready and able to deliver. The Under 21s is a great opportunity and hopefully there will be a chance to manage at a high level.”
Asked about which managers he took inspiration from, Cole said, “Carlo Ancelotti was key at man-managing.
“He set up sessions where the minute you got to the training ground you wanted to be out on that pitch.
“He made you feel safe and was very approachable — that really brought out the best in me.
“In terms of tactics, Jose Mourinho.
“Coming up against bigger opponents, he would write their height, their weight, the strong foot, the weak foot, where you want to show them.
“He had amazing gameplans.
“Arsene Wenger at times, he let the game be the teacher.
“I made a lot of mistakes in my early career and he never took me out of the team. He trusted the process that I was going to be a top player.
“If I could take all those three and squash them together then, hopefully, that will be me.
Ashley Cole explains ‘those’ comments
In 2019, in his first ‘sit down’ interview for 12 years with a British newspaper, Ashley Cole tried to explain ‘those’ comments, which saw Arsenal fans turn against him.
As a reminder, Cole said that he almost crashed his car when he learned Arsenal were only going to offer him £60k-a-week. Then he went to Chelsea.
“I’d say I’ve grown up,” he answered when asked if he’s mellowed. “I was a young, angry kid at the time and now I’ve grown up and understand the things I did is life, it happens.
“Not just me, but with certain situations loads of other people have done [the same]. I’ve learnt from it, it’s made me a better person. It’s made me a great dad.
“These are the things I focus on now – my kids and my girlfriend.
“It’s a different me, I’m more of a family man now. You won’t see me in nightclubs any more, you’ll see me at a park pushing my kids.
“I’m over it all now. I still feel I was unfairly treated [by the media], but I’m coming to the end of my career now and what’s done is done. I’m past all those situations of ‘my fault, not my fault’. Now I’m more about looking back and not thinking about the bad moments. There weren’t too many, really.
“When I did it [the book], I expected them to serialise it and not take one quote and take it out of context,” he says. “In the book, I said after it [the ‘swerve’ quote] that it’s not about the money, but that never got mentioned.
“Little frustrations like that made me that angry person at the time. I just thought it was always me, always me, always me.
“At times in my career, I was a scapegoat for a lot of things. The papers fuelled it by putting my name to certain things, when they didn’t with other players.
“I remember once giving my car away to the family of David Rocastle [the former Arsenal player who died from cancer in 2001] and there was a backlash. People said I did it for the publicity. I was like, ‘Why am I doing nice things?’ It was always brought back to me – being a bad person.
“It wasn’t racism, but I just think that they thought I was a young, flash little black kid with loads of money, when it wasn’t like that. It was more jealousy of success, I think.”
Looking back, I have to think that Cole is wrong. It WAS racism. Just look at how they still do the same things with Raheem Sterling.
“Raheem was spot on,” Cole adds. “He has changed it and it’s taken him to say that, when I [also] went through that. Maybe it was my fault not saying it – but if I had, it would probably have been spun against me.
“I was always fighting a battle: ‘Do I just say something, or leave it because I know the person I am?’ I was battling every day with it. So, in the end, I just thought I’d let my football do the talking, that is my job and what I’m paid to do. When I was going through bad times, I just wanted to be on the pitch because that’s what I was good at.”
Is it long past time to forgive Ashley Cole?
A few years ago, Paul Williams wondered if it was time for Arsenal fans to ‘forgive’ Ashley….
I know that for many of you, the name Ashley Cole opens up in your heart a dark hole.
I realise that this man, a brilliant footballer, betrayed every single Arsenal fan out there by meeting Chelsea officials just a few months after the Arsenal had completed their unbeaten season.
Lastly, I realise that a man being left “trembling with anger” having been offered wages of £55,000 per week is perhaps not a man deserving of too much sympathy.
But I think, now, despite the- sometimes disgusting- chants; despite the £20 notes with Cole’s face on them, despite the enmity that has existed between us and Cole ever since his 2006 move to Chelsea, it may be time to reassess this situation.
Of course, it’s a lot easier to say this now that Cole no longer plies his trade for the south west London hatefuls, but that fact isn’t the motivation for this article.
The motivation comes more from the fact that in all of the, rightful, celebration of Arsenal’s incredible achievement of 2004, Ashley Cole has been effectively airbrushed out of the picture and I don’t think that’s right.
Music analogy: Terry Chimes may not have been best mates with Joe Strummer, Topper Headon and Mick Jones, but his part in helping to make the first Clash album has never been ignored. Ok, so they may have referred to him as Tory Crimes on the album cover, but at least he’s been mentioned.
As for Ashley Cole- actually, I’ve just gone to have a look at his Twitter to check something he said the other day and found out that I’ve been blocked by him. This is a first for me, I haven’t even been blocked by Tancredi Palmer (yet). Was it something I said, Ashley?
I digress
Ashley Cole has chosen to remove himself from celebrations of an event he was a huge part of.
Whether it was Amy Lawrence’s magnificent book, Invincible, or the documentary Sky Sports screened after the Monaco first leg, Cole is Banquo’s Ghost (just for you, that one Helen).
Apparently, he made that decision himself as he felt Arsenal fans wouldn’t enjoy hearing from him on the subject of the Invincibles and I think this is a crying shame (perhaps it was the expression of that opinion which resulted in me being blocked).
Perhaps hearing from the man who once nearly crashed his car on learning about a proposed pay rise, may not be essential for everyone but I’m sure he has a story to tell and I would very much like to have heard it.
After all, it was Ashley’s last minute winner against Dinamo Kiev on Guy Fawkes night, 2003, which prevented early elimination from the Champions League. Okay, early elimination would have spared us the heartbreaking quarter final a few months later, but who knows how important that diving header was at the time? I think it was massively important, a shot in the arm for a team struggling with the demands of European competition.
Even if that goal actually doesn’t have the significance that I think it does, then Ashley still was so obviously proud to be part of that first team, you can see it in the interviews from that time.
He was right to feel so proud, a young kid, an Arsenal kid, coming up through the ranks and prospering in, not just any Arsenal team, but THAT Arsenal team.
How proud would you feel?
I think the club knew the importance of that connection too.
Is it a coincidence that the picture chosen for the final Arsenal programme of the 2001/02 season features Cole and Sol together in ecstasy rather than the famous image of Kanu and Wiltord celebrating the latter’s title-winning goal? I don’t think so.
I do think it’s ironic, though, that Ashley Cole would leave Arsenal in not dissimilar circumstances that saw the former Tottenham captain join us.
Did the Arsenal board try and lowball a player they felt would stay at the club, whatever they offered, because of that connection?
Don’t get me wrong, £55,000 is a lot of money. I’d be happy with that a year, never mind a week, but we all know footballers live in a different world to the rest of us. Why should this supremely talented left back have been any different?
If it’s true that he was promised one thing and then offered another- yes, boo hoo- then that never sat well with me.
Observing our transfer dealings, particularly the failed ones, down the years it seems that Arsenal made a mistake with Ashley Cole that they took a very, very long time to learn from.
Maybe, probably, it was influenced by the lack of cash around as we moved from Highbury.
Whatever.
As far as I’m concerned, it certainly casts Cole’s estrangement from Arsenal in a much kinder light, particularly when you hear former captain Patrick Vieira say that he tried to fight for Ashley to get the pay rise he felt the left back deserved.
If Vieira, an immigrant in north London, could grasp the significance of not giving Cole- in Vieira’s eyes, a potential captain of Arsenal- the right pay rise, then it strikes you as odd that David Dein and co didn’t. Perhaps the board felt that Cole could easily be replaced, after all, he was only a left back and that Gael Clichy looked quite a player at that time, didn’t he?
I wonder if Cole would have got what he wanted had he been a central midfielder, or a centre forward, rather than “only” a left back.
I think time has proved the (lack of) wisdom in that decision.
Chelsea gained a world class player at the peak of his powers and I am left feeling that, as with Patrick Vieira, Arsenal lost a player that they’ve never really replaced properly.
Whatever the reasons, I think it’s time we put the bitterness aside, if we can, and recognise just how important Ashley Cole was to that great Arsenal team.
After all, if you want to talk about Arsenal betrayals, there’s a whole new cast of characters to talk about now…