Cole urges West Ham stars to 'man up'

Posted Saturday, April 23, 2011 by Talksport.co.uk

Carlton Cole has called on his team-mates to ‘man up’ as the Hammers battle to avoid relegation from the Premier League.

The east Londoners are stuck in the bottom three with games running out, but the England striker is confident they can climb away from trouble.

He told talkSPORT: “I’m not even thinking about going down. I’d be devastated, but that’s not my mind-set.

“We shouldn’t be in this position but we are where we find ourselves and now it’s up to the players to man up. We can’t have any passengers on the field otherwise it’s going to go down to the wire and we don’t want that.

“We can’t have anyone sulking. We all need to do our jobs. No-one here wants to go down.”

West Ham will continue their battle for survival at Chelsea on Saturday, but will be without talisman Scott Parker who remains sidelined with an achilles injury.

The midfield ace was named Football Writers’ Footballer of the Year on Friday and Cole was quick to pay tribute to his team-mate.

“Parker is one of those players who leads by example,” he said. “He won’t shy away from any challenge and those are the characters you need, especially when you’re fighting relegation.

“He deserves all the accolades he gets. He’s one of the best players in the Premier League at the moment.”

Cole will be looking to end a troubled week on a high against his former club after being fined £20,000 by the FA for his Twitter comments following the recent England v Ghana game. He insists, however, he did nothing wrong.

He insisted: “I made a joke and it was taken in the wrong way. The FA has made a decision and fined me over it. I disagree with that.

“I apologised straight after and took the comments down, but I still got punished for it.”