It's always the end of an era somewhere in
football. There was a time when I would have been disappointed at the thought of Andy
Cooke moving on. That was when he was one of our most promising players, and, during the
grim days, our only saleable asset. I was disbelieving of a suggestion a couple of years
back, when we had a team full of cast-offs struggling to stay afloat, that we should cash
him in and invest the money in the team. But we've all moved on so much and so quickly
from those days. From fighting to avoid relegation to the third we now seem to be
established in the first. Naturally, not all players have made the step up, and so
naturally some now need to move elsewhere to play. So it is that the departure of Andy
Cooke is not met with surprise or dismay; the most common response seems to be 'makes
sense really'. He won't be the last one time first teamer to move on.
Andy Cooke joined us in April 1995 for a small fee of £40,000,
although that was a large fee in the context of the League of Wales, where he was playing
for Newtown. He went on to make his debut in the 1995-96 season, scoring on his first
start against York in October. He was signed by Jimmy Mullen, and it's a testament to
changing times at Turf Moor that in his five and a half years at Burnley he played under
three more managers. After being sub a lot in his early days, I agree that he found his
best form under, ironically, the worst manager, chris waddle. In a wretched season, we
needed Cooke's goals. A game I'll always remember was the last one of that horrible
1997-98 season, when we beat Plymouth and results elsewhere kept
us up. Both our goals were scored by Cooke. It was easy to find the match report from the
next day's Observer. It's been stuck on my kitchen noticeboard ever since:
"Cooke served up the tastiest of Lancashire hotpots [UGH!]
with a stunning headed double to preserve Burnley's second division status... Cooke's
goals, his nineteenth and twentieth of the season, were sublimely despatched. The first
after 12 minutes settled home nerves as he powered in an effort from Little's cross on the
right... Cooke netted a second four minutes from half time."
And for those, without which we wouldn't be where we are now, he
deserves our lasting thanks.
It was probably the next season that things started to go wrong. In
the next relegation scrap, he didn't score enough goals, and it was a criticism that's
continued ever since. There was some debate that he'd been asked to curb his natural
aggression, that had seen him pick up bookings and suspensions, and that without that he
couldn't play the same way. But if you can't play your game within the rules, how good are
you? Last season was the one in which I changed my mind about Cooke. In a
promotion-seeking team, he should have been banging them in, but he wasn't. It was
frustrating, because he seemed to score in little bursts of goals, but these ended too
quickly. His magnificent headed goal in our brilliant FA Cup win at Derby,
without doubt his second most memorable moment in a Burnley shirt, proved he could do it.
Here's what we said:
"A photograph from one Sunday paper shows Cooke rising at
least a foot above his defender, frozen forever in mid air as the sole Claret in a clutch
of Derby players... You probably know that the crowd went mad. Anything before this had
been merely a warm up. 5,000 jumped up and down and roared as loud as lungs would allow a
chant of praise for Andy Cooke. As we landed, I swear I felt the stand shake. If I was
Andy Cooke, I'd feel that once I'd had the satisfaction of 5,000 people singing my name
unequivocally and unhesitatingly, I could die pretty happy."
Let's never forget that football is a romantic game, and recall the
magic of that day.
But pragmatically, when only promotion mattered, it wasn't enough.
It was during this season that opinions on Cooke solidified into two camps. They were
those who praised his workrate, his determination, his heart on sleeve commitment to the
cause and his unegotistical willingness to be a team player. And then they were those who
affirmed that the single criterion to measure a striker by is goals. You need ego. You
need some selfishness. I was disappointed this year when Cooke said his first aim was to
keep his place in the team. He should have been aiming higher. He should have been setting
himself targets. And when Cooke started getting stick, we'd come full circle. I recall a
miserable league cup match at Charlton when some fans gave Kurt
Nogan remorseless abuse, calling him useless and shouting to get Cookey on.
Being a good manager isn't just about knowing when to sign players.
It's also about knowing when to let players go. Don't underrate this skill. It was one of
the mistakes Jimmy Mullen made when we last came up to this division. He put too much
faith in the team that had taken him there. Ternent looks like he knows when it's time to
move someone on. I like the evolutionary approach to team-building that he's adopted: we
have a number of targets, and as and when they become available, we move for them. The
team continues to develop this season. Michopoulos is in for Crichton. It's hard to credit
now that we started this season with Cooke and Gray up front, and now they'll both have
gone. But those were different times, when we thought we might struggle, and now
it's clear we're not, it's time to move on to the next phase. That phase involves getting
together a side which can mount a play-off challenge... next season. And, when we started
the season with Cooke and Gray up front, we weren't scoring enough goals, were we?
We should still remember what a shock it was when we turned up at Tranmere and Cooke wasn't even on the bench. None of us could
remember the last time that happened. The writing was on the wall then. He was out for the
next four matches. The only game he started after that was at home to Crewe on Halloween, when he scored his last Burnley goal. But he
was on the bench for the next two, then once again out of the 16. The rumour mill (has
anyone ever seen it? Where is it?) was in full action by now. Cooke had been linked with
moves throughout his Burnley career. But the rumours had changed to reflect the new times.
A couple of years back, whispers were of moves to higher placed clubs, on the basis that
we always expected our best players to be sold. Now there were rumours of steps down,
smaller money moves, even part exchange makeweight transfers.
As we know, it would appear he has joined Stoke. I don't know if he
has any affinity with the area or the club. He is reported on Stoke sites as being Stoke
on Trent born, and the official site concurs, although my Clarets collection says he was
born in Shrewsbury, so someone's wrong. I do hope he'll bang in the goals, although
they're not a club I am capable of feeling any affection for, and I note that in joining a
club pushing for promotion from the second, he's being asked to do something he didn't do
enough of last season. And who knows, perhaps the deal will break down when he refuses to
change his name to Andy Andylargsson.
I only met Andy Cooke once, when he was one of the London Clarets'
guests at a London supporters dinner in, I think, early 1996. He wasn't in the team then.
He struck me as a pleasant, if rather quiet, modest young lad. What was more touching is
that when our Chairman, who'd been at that dinner, bumped into Andy again at one of the
post-promotion celebrations this year, it was Cooke who mentioned the dinner and asked him
to pass his best wishes on to us all. That was the act of a true gent.
I was a bit sad when I heard the news, because I'm a
sentimentalist, and it's a wrench when anyone who's been at the club for as long as five
years leaves. How many have been at the club longer? But that's the reality now. We've
moved on, and so has Cooke. I'm sure I speak for all the London Clarets when I say he goes
with our very best wishes.
