Yeah, good to see Essien have a good game, after such a long lay off it's great to see him back on the pitch again. He'll make a difference for us next season. He's had a good rest too so he will be as fresh as a daisy.
Jon Obi is back too, and I thought he also had a very good game against Palace. His passing was quicker and very accurate, and he seemed very focused. He's also been out for a while so he's well rested too, and fully fit.
Joe Cole is now a Liverpool player. Some Chelsea fan he turned out to be huh?
I have very mixed feelings over this saga involving Joe. I agree with the club when they say that Joe has given us very little over the last 18 months, to warrant his demanded 50% wage rise, (That's £120,000 a week), and that he needs to show the club first that he can still deliver the goods when he is asked to.
Sure, Joe has been out for a long time with a bad injury, and since his return to the squad (and for England), he looks to me like he might never be the Joe Cole that we once knew and loved a couple of years ago.
Sure, he's always gonna score a cheeky and wonderful goal here and there, (like the back heeled goal against Manchester United last season
), or provide a nice pass now and again, but from what I've seen of him since his return from injury, he looks slower and hardly anything that he has tried to do on the pitch has come off.
Joe should have taken the £100,000 a week that Chelsea offered him. Then get his head down, train hard and prove to us all that he isn't finished. Then he could maybe ask for a raise.
Lets face it, Joe is not such a great player now than when he signed his last contract with us. His fitness and his form have deteriorated big time since then. Why would any employer want to give a 50% pay rise to an employee who has not earned it?
Maybe that old chestnut about getting more playing time at another club is Joe's excuse for leaving. To a certain extent that's true, but the only reason he didn't get much pitch time last season was because he was either injured, or often played badly when he did come on.
He also couldn't accept that Carlo wanted to bring him back slowly after such an injury, and Joe's impatience with that decision contributed to his poor form overall.
Shame to see him leave, but I expected him to do it with a little more class to be honest. I think he's probably wondering why nobody thought he was worth the money he was demanding. Wondering why Joe thought he was worth such huge wages and a massive signing on fee, when he has spent the most part of the last two seasons injured.
So everyone turned their backs on him and said "No thanks Joe". Everyone except Liverpool that is. So he went there. The only club who wanted him. Liverpool. Of all the clubs he went to Liverpool.
Joe Cole should be embarrassed by that. Not just because it's Liverpool, but the fact that nobody else came in to sign him. Not at that silly price anyhow. At least I hope it brings him down to Earth a little, because it's now obvious to me that Joe Cole, somewhere along the line, lost the plot. Big shame.
Good Luck Joe and thanks mate.
C'MON U BLUES