Has Joe Cole finally found his home at Liverpool?

There were always going to be question marks over a Liverpool team missing Steven Gerrard and Fernando Torres. Where would the creativity come from and who would have the quality to take the game by the scruff of the neck? The answer, which might have been a surprise to fans of his former club Chelsea, was Joe Cole.

At 28 years old, his career has yet to reach the heights that many predicted it would while he was a bright-eyed prospect under Harry Redknapp's guidance at West Ham. Of the same generation as Steven Gerrard, Ashley Cole and Jermain Defoe, Cole was considered to have the brightest future of them all.

After leaving West Ham to join Chelsea in 2004, Cole has only fulfilled some of that promise. While a career haul which includes three Premier League and three FA Cup medals is not to be sniffed at, a sequence of long-term injuries combined with his bosses' unfortunate tendency to play him out of position on the wing, mean that we have yet to see his best.

Perhaps this is why he took the difficult decision to leave Chelsea and uproot his family to Liverpool in the summer. On the evidence of last night, it could well have been an inspired move.

Playing in his favoured position, in the hole just behind the striker, Cole broke the first of what could be many Liverpool records last night, scoring their quickest ever European goal in just 26 seconds. A nervy, underhit Steaua backpass was swooped upon by the diminutive midfielder, which he then clipped past the Bucharest keeper with aplomb.

More importantly, he was the dynamo that kept the Liverpool team ticking last night. That a team which featured such unfavoured players as David Ngog, Lucas Leiva and Ryan Babel were able to increase Liverpool's goal tally to four, is largely down to Joe Cole's intelligent movement, passing and backtracking to pick the ball up deep.

This sort of creativity and guile is exactly what Liverpool missed so sorely last season, and it is perhaps because of Cole's arrival that Roy Hodgson allowed last year's £20m signing Alberto Aquilani to go back on loan to Italy.

The one disappointment of the evening was the pathetic turnout to watch Liverpool play. Just 25,605 Koppites made it to Anfield last night, although one figures those numbers will increase if Cole continues in this masterful form. ·