Joe Cole has suggested that Ledley King would have left Tottenham Hotspur and won titles if it wasn’t for injuries.
The Tottenham legend’s struggles with knee problems towards the back end of his career were well-documented.
Ledley King was a naturally gifted defender and looked destined to achieve great things with Spurs after making his debut back in 1999. But King struggled with persistent knee injuries from 2006 onwards.
Towards the end of his career, the defender rarely trained with Tottenham in an attempt to save himself for games of the weekend.
Despite his struggles with injuries, King oozed class whenever he took to the pitch and many Spurs supporters believe he could have been one of the best English defenders if his generation if it wasn’t for his persistent knee problems.
But Chelsea legend Joe Cole has suggested that King would have gone on to leave Tottenham and win titles if he hadn’t suffered with persistent injuries.
Cole suggests King would have left Tottenham
Speaking on TNT Sports, both Cole and Rio Ferdinand chose an all-time XI of players who didn’t live up to their potential.
King featured in the side at centre-back and Cole explained why he believes injuries held the Spurs legend back.
“We have to put asterisks on the list, like you said because of reasons for not fulfilling their talent,” Cole said.
“Like Ledley King, for instance, JT [John Terry] and Rio [Ferdinand] were the best centre-halves of our generation and they’ll tell you. Ledley couldn’t train but his name doesn’t stand next to them.
“But if he could’ve trained, he could’ve been winning titles and he eventually had to stay at Tottenham because he was training once or twice a week.”
While we firmly believe King would have been remembered as one of the best English centre-backs of his generation if it wasn’t for injuries, we highly doubt he would’ve considered a move away from Spurs.
The Englishman has gone on record plenty of times and stated that he was keen to spend his entire career at Hotspur Way.
And that is exactly what the centre-back did as he retired from football in 2012 after 14 years in north London.
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