Gianfranco Zola’s time as West Ham manager has had its’ ups and downs. Last seasons’ 9th place finish was a success, especially as it was attained playing a stylish brand of football. The signing of Savio Nsereko was something of a failure and the start to this season has been worrying; Zola has not been helped by the deadline day loss of James Collins or the long-term injury to Dean Ashton that is threatening to end his career. However, Zola’s greatest success of the last year must be the rise of Carlton Cole, who is now one of the most dominating centre-forwards in the league.

Before arriving at West Ham, Cole’s career had taken a nomadic path, with loan spells at Wolves, Charlton and Aston Villa. None of these loan periods were particularly successful and Cole struggled to establish himself at Chelsea with competition from the likes of Drogba and Crespo. That is not to say that Cole was without promise; Claudio Ranieri described him as the best young player he had worked with when he was at Chelsea and in 2003 the Blues secured Cole on a six-year deal. Things did not work out for Cole as he failed to achieve his potential during the 2005/06 season.

Cole took some time to settle with West Ham; he was a fringe player in his first season, but in 2007/08 he grew in stature and contributed six goals and nine assists in the league. In that season only four forwards racked up more assists than Cole in the league (Dimitar Berbatov, Ashley Young, Wayne Rooney and Salomon Kalou). It was last year that Cole came into his own under the guidance of Zola. He notched up twelve goals and four assists; the absence of Ashton and the sale of Bellamy meant that Cole was now the club’s main striker and he dealt with the responsibility. It was not just his statistics that improved under Zola, Cole’s all round game has also significantly improved. His movement and awareness of team-mates is now much better and he appears to understand what it takes to be a successful target-man; working under Zola has also seen his confidence and first touch improve.

Fabio Capello gave Cole his first England cap in February against Spain; since then Cole has accumulated five more caps and stands a decent chance of making the World Cup squad. With the way that Capello has set England up to play, using Heskey as a target-man, Cole may be chosen to provide back-up for the Villa man. It has even been argued that with Cole’s superior first touch and goal record, he should be preferred to Heskey in the starting line-up.

Gianfranco Zola has shown himself to be one of the most promising young managers in the Premier League; he faces a real challenge this year as West Ham are struggling both on the pitch and financially. But the work he has done with Carlton Cole suggests that for any promising forward there are few better managers to work for than Zola. Cole has been linked with big money moves recently and if West Ham do decide to cash in on the England man, Zola will take a lot of the credit.

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