Joe Cole: 'I should never have joined Liverpool'

West Ham United midfielder Joe Cole has admitted that signing for Liverpool three years ago was a mistake.

The 31-year-old, who failed to secure a regular starting spot in the Reds' first team, which led to a return to Upton Park in January, has claimed that he was wrongly lured to Anfield.

"I can only play for teams that I'm passionate about and I think that's what went wrong for me at Liverpool," ESPN quotes Cole as saying. "I didn't feel a connection with the club or the place that I had at Chelsea and West Ham.

"When I joined, the guy interviewing me said 'you've joined the biggest club in the country' and reeled off the trophies they'd won. I just said 'yeah, if you put it like that, I suppose you're right' and Liverpool used that as the headline to the interview.

"I didn't want to upset anyone so I just went along with it. But obviously they're not the biggest club in the country any more. How do you judge how big a club are? Nottingham Forest won the European Cup twice but they're not a bigger club than Chelsea."

Cole began his career at West Ham before moving in 2003 to Chelsea, where he spent seven years.