It’s fair to say Joe Cole was given a rather brutal introduction to Premier League football under Harry Redknapp at West Ham United.
Brought into training when he was just twelve or thirteen, former Hammers hero Ian Bishop remembers the time hard-man extraordinaire Julian Dicks welcomed Joe Cole by booting him up in the air with one of those typically full-blooded lunges.
He might have been at an age where most teenagers are not even thinking about their GCSEs but, as far as the less forgiving members of the West Ham United squad were concerned, if you are good enough, you are old enough to receive some pretty rough treatment.
Welcome to senior football, and all that.
The legendary Ian Wright did not hold back either, when a 17-year-old Cole failed to deliver the through ball he was looking for on what was his first-team debut during an FA Cup clash with Swansea City in January 1999.
Yet, despite a few choice words from his idol, one of West Ham’s greatest-ever academy graduates still recalls with great fondness the time he saw Wright walk through the doors at Chadwell Heath for the very first time.
31 Oct 1998: Ian Wright of West Ham United scores his first goal for the Hammers during the FA Carling Premiership match against Newcastle United played at St James’s Park in Newcastle, England. The match finished in a 0-3 win for West Ham United Mandatory Credit: Phil Cole /AllsportJoe Cole was ‘starstruck’ when West Ham United signed Arsenal legend Ian Wright
And while Cole knew all there was to know about a striker who joined the Hammers after becoming Arsenal’s all-time record goalscorer, Wright had heard a thing or two about his new baby-faced teammate as well.
“Living in Camden, I loved Wrighty!” Cole recalls, speaking on The Good, The Bad, and The Football podcast. “And then when he signed for West Ham, I was proper starstruck.
“I remember he walked into Chadwell Heath. You know what he’s like! I’m sitting there and I could hear his voice coming in. I’m like, ‘wow, it’s Ian Wright!’.
“And he’s come in and gone, ‘where’s the wonderkid? Where is he?’ And I’m going, ‘oh, he’s talking about me, man!’ And I even think I said, ‘I’m here, Ian’. I called him Ian!
“He said something like, ‘I can’t wait to play with you’. I was just buzzing. I went home and told the boys.
“I made my debut with Ian Wright! I came on the pitch against Swansea, got the ball, looked up, he’s made a run. I’ve gone to play it and thought, ‘it’s not on’, and he just abused me.
“That got me ready for first-team football!”
Jermain Defoe idolised Premier League great Wright
Wright would score nine Premier League goals during his one and only season at West Ham before winding down a fabulous career at Nottingham Forest, Celtic and Burnley.
Another homegrown West Ham wonderkid, a certain Jermain Defoe, was an obsessive member of the Ian Wright fanclub too. So much so that, during his early days in the Charlton Athletic academy, Defoe poured over every single one of Wright’s 185 Arsenal goals until he could envisage them with his eyes shut.
“You know that ReWrighting the Record DVD? I used to watch it every single night after training,” Defoe says. “It was crazy.”
The aforementioned Bishop would not get the chance to play alongside Wright, having left West Ham a few months before his arrival in 1998.
Bishop does recall the signings of John Hartson and Paul Kitson, however, as well as Joe Cole’s formative years in claret and blue.
“One time Harry brought Joe Cole [to train with the first-team],” Bishop says. “He had been talking about this little kid and how good he was. He was 12 or 13.
“[Redknapp] brought him into training, and Julian smashed him up in the air! Well, if he’s training with us Harry, it’s your fault!
“[Even at that age, Cole was] superb. He tore David Unsworth left, right and centre. ‘Unsy’ couldn’t stay with him. [Cole] left him on his backside a few times.”