Andrew Cole today announces his retirement to The Times. A miserable November day, in an upstairs room at the offices of his management company, was not the time nor the place that one of the best centre forwards of his generation had hoped to call time on a distinguished career. When Cole signed for Nottingham Forest, he dreamt of going out in a blaze of glory, of shooting his home-town club back into the Premier League.

Instead there were tears. Cole, 37, made an acrimonious departure from Forest 11 days ago and yesterday spoke for the first time. Cole voiced regrets at his lack of opportunities at the City Ground, at the mixed messages from Colin Calderwood, the club's manager, and at the inevitable whispering campaign that followed his exit - but he came across like a man who had been relieved of a burden.

Characterised, by his own admission, as “narky, sullen and unapproachable”, the former Newcastle United, Manchester United and England forward was at peace with himself, if not with Calderwood, as he contemplated his first steps as a coach or manager.

“It's not the ideal ending,” Cole said of his exit from Forest, his contract having been cancelled by mutual consent after he failed to score in 11 appearances. “It just wasn't working out. I told them from the outset that I didn't want to go there to sit on the bench because I didn't want to be perceived as sitting back and making easy money. I wanted to go there and offer something, but it was a strange one from the start. I never knew what my role was. Was it to lend a hand, use my experience, or was it a PR thing, to sell a few more season tickets? I still don't know. I felt like the manager wouldn't have a conversation with me. I don't know if it's the right word, but he seemed kind of intimidated by me.

“I wanted it to work out, but I was playing for 60 minutes and then getting taken off. Or sometimes I wasn't getting picked at all. After a game at Preston, I said to myself: ‘You don't play, then they give you an hour, then you get taken off. Is it really worth it?' That was in September. I told him [Calderwood] then that I wanted to go and that I would serve three months' notice if they wanted me to, which was in my contract. He said ‘no, give it another month', which I was prepared to do, and then suddenly, a few weeks later, the club start putting it around that they've sacked me or that I've walked out.

“People will look at it and say this is how they expected me to go, in a huff or in some kind of controversy, but it wasn't like that. I just wish Forest could have been honest. I've always been honest in my career, maybe too honest for my own good.”

That honesty extends to an admission that he was too hasty in leaving Manchester United for Blackburn Rovers in December 2001 - “probably the biggest mistake I've ever made” - but, reflecting on a career that brought five Premier League winner's medals, two FA Cups and a Champions League, not to mention 15 England caps, there are few regrets.

“There's always going to be the odd one, with me the way I am as a person, as a player,” he said. “But I wouldn't change a thing. I've lived the dream.” The dream now is to go into management or coaching, with a role at Blackburn Rovers, under Paul Ince, already mooted. Cole has not heard from his former United team-mate, but as a player who scored 289 goals in 646 appearances in a career spanning 12 clubs, he feels that he is well placed to teach the next generation about the art of goalscoring.

“You would think so - unless I just happened to have a lot of luck in my career,” he said. “I've all this experience. I don't want to keep it to myself. I want to give something back. I don't think it's the end of the Andrew Cole story. Hopefully it's a new chapter.”

Model of a modern-day forward whose record speaks for itself

As he hangs up his boots, it is a source of pride to Andrew Cole that only one player has scored more Premier League goals since the league’s launch in 1992. In spells in the top flight with Newcastle United, Manchester United, Blackburn Rovers, Fulham, Manchester City, Portsmouth and Sunderland, he scored a remarkable total of 187 goals, a figure surpassed by only Alan Shearer (260). Thierry Henry, Robbie Fowler and Les Ferdinand are next on the list.

At his peak with Newcastle and Manchester United, Cole was a prolific goalscorer but, like Fowler, Ferdinand and Ian Wright, he often found his England prospects impaired by the pre-eminence of Shearer during an international career that spanned six years and five coaches.

His first four caps were won under four different coaches (Terry Venables, Glenn Hoddle, Howard Wilkinson and Kevin Keegan) in an international career defined by Hoddle’s infamous claim that the forward “needs six or seven chances to score one”.

Cole said yesterday: “I didn’t agree with that at all. The difficulty I had was England were blessed with a lot of top-class centre forwards at the time. If I had been a few years younger or a few years older, then it might have been different. But such is life.”

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