What is Carlton's game?

Carlton's broadside is fascinating. He rages against the machine with a vengeance, dumping his frustration in no uncertain terms with one of the least guarded statements I have seen since the advent of media and image consultants. A contributor has posted Cole's comments elsewhere, but they are so powerful that I think they stand repetition here. I therefore carry his comments in full below.

The question is, what does Cole hope to achieve. It may be a case simply of venting frustration of course, and engaging the stable door on his brain only after the words had bolted. He may have read his comments back and thought, "Shite!". We have all done that at times in our lives!

On the other hand, Cole may be the nominated spokesman for a disaffected bunch of players, the John Terry style mouthpiece, willing to go where the angels fear to tread. If so, I hope the players now back him and don't behave like the cowards in the England dressing room, stabbing their team  mate in the back and forming a quick queue to voice support for the "gaffer". After the shambolic performance at Liverpool, we need a "Spartacus" approach if there is discontent in the dressing room, not a series of Shaggy style denials. 

Let's face it, this is a gutless bunch of players. Where was the criticism of Zola last season? And where was the criticism of Zola's dismissal if they rated the guy? Boa broke cover after the final game of the season, daring to criticise Sullivan, but a new contract bought his silence in double quick time. Less "I'm Spartacus" and more "I'm Spartacu..lary happy with the way this club is being run!"

Alternatively, Cole may simply be laying the foundations of an exit strategy. If Grant is going nowhere then Cole may have to be offloaded somewhere following his open criticism of the manager. Cole looked exasperated when withdrawn at Anfield but I saw no difference between the way he was isolated in Saturday's game from the way he looked isolated for most of last season under Zola. He seems to have forgotten that 4-3-3 was not the invention of Avram! No doubt Cole feels the loss of Zola most keenly because Gianfranco was the Red Pollard to Carlton's Sea Biscuit! As a result, like the posters who still defend Zola, and indeed like Pollard himself, Cole has some major blind spots (let's face it, he can't even see the back of the net from 12 yards out!).

Maybe Carlton wants out. Who could blame him? The fans are unfair to him and with a manager who seems unsure of his abilities, it would surely suit Cole to move to pastures new. Even Stoke might seem a reasonable alternative after what Carlton has endured so far this season.

Then there's the third possibility, that Cole was green lighted to speak up by Sullivan. Let's face it, the utterances of the players are very tightly controlled these days, so the Cole comments are all the more shocking. Maybe, just maybe, the sacking of Petrovic and the comments of Cole are a calculated strategy to undermine Grant and prepare the ground for another constructive dismissal.

Any which way, Cole's comments point to deep divisions in the dressing room and, on the eve of the crucial Wigan game, are less than helpful.

Here's what he said:

"The game plan was for me to stay as the longest person away from everybody and try to hit me on the diagonal or something, but we weren't even doing that, so that went out of the window and we didn't have a Plan B"

"In the first ten minutes we had lost the game, psychologically anyway. That was diabolical. We didn't even turn up for this game. The first ten minutes we dropped so deep. I can only remember one time when the ball came up to me and I kind of miscontrolled it, but we still retained possession, then I looked to my left and there was no one attacking - there was nobody there at all.

"I think I had just one cross, apart from that I had nothing and as a striker, that's starvation, that's famine - what am I supposed to work on? When we changed to 4-4-2 in the second half, I felt more comfortable because someone was up there with me and I felt that we were starting to get on the ball a little more.

"But then I got taken off and I was like, okay, that's not what they want me to do. They would rather I stood up there on my own, trying to make nothing happen. So what was the game plan? Was it to sit back and hit Liverpool on the counter-attack? Apparently not."

"I'm deflated," Cole said. "I'm not happy and I hope something can happen as soon as possible because we need to change this ASAP. Everyone is deflated."