Rewind to 2006, Chelsea beat the deadline and finally managed to sign England international Ashley Cole from Arsenal.
It was such a long time ago now that even this report on it from The BBC was the old style website design, and it’s just weird!
As they say, Chelsea paid an absolute bargain £5 million to sign Cole, but they had to send William Gallas the other way.
I am pretty sure there was not a single Blues fan upset by this deal in anyway, Chelsea had landed themselves a world class left back and still to this day the best ever full back they’ve had.
Cole was hated by Arsenal fans for jumping ship to his local rivals, but he didn’t care one bit. He went on to win a Premier League Title, four FA Cups, a League Cup, and a Champions League Trophy.
As well as that, he cemented himself firmly as a Chelsea legend forever.
Cole has been speaking about making that move to Chelsea to Gary Lineker on Match of The Day this weekend, as reported by The Daily Mirror.
Cole said:
“The transition in terms of being in a different group environment and players was easy because at the time when I first started at Arsenal, I always keep mentioning them but that was the core, the Seamans, the Keowns, the Vieiras, the Henrys, the Adams.
“And obviously when they started to leave, I just felt – this is me personally – I felt there were holes in the culture of what it was before, the demands on training.
“I just felt it was falling apart a bit or there was gaps missing that wasn’t filled.
“So that transition in terms of, you know, finding myself in a different culture and the willingness and want to win – I went to Chelsea and I had that.”
