YOU don't often hear rants from footballers in public. Not unless it's about the amount of time they're getting - or not getting - on the pitch or the amount of money they're being paid. In both cases it usually amounts to a player agitating for a transfer.

Not in Carlton Cole's case.

The West Ham striker this week went on the offensive about virtually everything, apart from the two topics mentioned above.

No, this was a man deeply concerned at the malaise his club finds itself in and with a burning desire to put it right.

First, Cole attacked the team's performance in their meek surrender at Anfield last week: “That was diabolical. We can come here and talk a good game but at the end of the day, we didn’t even turn up. I’m lost for words now, I can’t speak too much because I get emotional with these things and it gets on my nerves.”

Then he lambasted the tactics employed by manager Avram Grant: “The game plan was for me to stay as the longest person away from everybody and try and hit me on the diagonal or something, but we weren’t even doing that, so that went out of the window and we didn’t have a plan B.

“I think I had just one cross (against Liverpool), apart from that I had nothing and as a striker, that’s starvation, that’s famine. What am I supposed to work on?”

And finally, and most tellingly, he demanded change: “I think now we need to change attitudes. I’m being honest now, I think we should play like Bolton – they are getting results. Play like Bolton, play like Stoke. Hit it long, stop all the pretty stuff. Next game (against Wigan) I want to play ugly. Ugly is the way forward for us now. Play it long, I’ll try and put my head on it and let’s try and make something work from that. I don’t want to play pretty football any more, because pretty football is not getting us the results any more.”

It was a blistering, impassioned plea for change borne out of intense frustration at a series of displays and results that have left fans tearing their hair out and that has given rise to a predicament that bears no signs of correcting itself.

And how refreshing Cole's words are. Nicklas Bendtner, take note. Wayne Rooney, take note. And every over-paid prima donna tottering around Premier League pitches every weekend thinking only of their next pay packet, take note.

There never has been an 'I' in team, but too often players have found that there is a 'me' if you look carefully enough.

Nobody would have blamed Cole if he came out like most other players and trotted out the same old lines after the Liverpool debacle. 'We just have to make sure we stick together and we'll be OK,' or 'we're playing well and if we just keep going the results will come,' before putting the headphones back on and sloping off to the team bus.

These are lines that West Ham boss Grant has got down to a tee. But not Cole.

Clearly, the mood in the camp has become so low that one of the elder statesmen felt it necessary to take it upon himself and fight back, show a bit of pride in the shirt and demonstrate that some players really do care how their team fares, that they really are hurting when they are getting chewed up and spat out every week.

Cole obviously disagrees with the way the team are being set up and the tactics that are being used. Some will argue that such thoughts should be kept to himself, or at least within the confines of the dressing room. That may be true. But at least he has shown that he cares.

So often the target of the fans' ire at the Boleyn Ground, many supporters seem to forget that Cole was the team's standout player – along with Scott Parker – last season until he suffered a serious knee injury.

Perhaps he is guilty of failing to reproduce the kind of form that had Liverpool salivating over him back in January, even though that can be at least partially put down to the injury. But what Cole cannot be accused of is a lack of passion to perform for the famous claret and blue shirt.

Grant may yet take a dim view of Cole's decision to speak out against him, but he should really be grateful that he has at least one player who is willing to fight for the cause.