AFC Wimbledon: Missing West Ham cult hero was sliding doors moment | OneFootball

The Dons were very close to signing Carlton Cole back in 2018, but had it happened, what would the present day look like?

Back in 2017, AFC Wimbledon were fighting in a relegation battle and did not have a competitive frontline.

They did have the goalscoring talents of Lyle Taylor pushing the team on but were struggling to get gametime into Kwesi Appiah and Cody McDonald, due to fitness and injury issues.

So when the opportunity arose to sign a then 34-year-old Carlton Cole, the club, managed by Neal Ardley at the time, almost snapped the former West Ham United man up.

An injury put pay to the deal and an alternative was found, the impact of which is likely still felt to this day.

Carlton Cole to AFC Wimbledon: What happened to the deal and why he was a target

When Wimbledon looked at getting Cole in to play, the former West Ham and Chelsea striker had just come off of two disappointing spells in the USA with Sacramento Republic, and Indonesia with Persib Bandung.

The striker, who had scored 52 goals in 288 Premier League games, had only managed nine appearances across the two sides, with him not being able to find the net in either country.

So it is natural to wonder why Wimbledon, who were in need of another goalscorer at that stage to take the strain off of Lyle Taylor would choose Cole, and the answer to that lies in Ardley's favoured style of play.

Having come into the Wimbledon FC side at a time when the likes of John Fashanu and Dean Holdsworth were up front, he preferred to pair a smaller, more nimble striker with a big target-man and having already got Taylor as the smaller forward, the Dons now needed a big lump up top, which they did not have at the time, with the best option being McDonald for his ability to hold up play from time to time.

Wimbledon needed someone to be a focal point, to win headers, and that is what Cole offered. When the news broke that Ardley had the former Premiership striker training with the club, he told South London Press: "It’s local for him and at the same time we get a look at him. There is no harm done, and it is good to have someone like that around the place.

"He’s trained really hard – because he hasn’t played for two years and was miles off it. He had been working with our sports science guy Jason [Moriarty] before finally joining in first-team training.

“It is a difficult one. We’re having a look at him and other options to try and work out the best way to go forward."

And have a look at him is exactly what the Dons did. Giving him a reserves match against Southend United, the Croydon-born forward apparently scored and appeared to be a favourable option to look at ahead of the January window.

However, an innocuous rib injury that was somehow sustained soon put pay to anything further being discussed. In another interview with SLP soon after, Ardley revealed what had happened with the injury and where it left the deal.

He said: "At the moment Carlton Cole is injured. He has injured his intercostal muscle. We wanted to get him another game to have another look. We are looking at our [transfer] options and have got a couple we’re looking to make in-roads into.

"We’ll see what happens on that one [regarding Cole's deal].”

Cole's failed move helped shape present-day Dons

As is now known, Cole did not make the move to South West London. In fact, by the time the January window of 2018 had shut, he had already been in a non-playing role back at West Ham for a month, helping out with their under-18 side along with a former teammate, Jack Collison, and he would then confirm his retirement from football in March.

But what exactly does missing out the West Ham cult-hero have to do with anything that Wimbledon are doing in the current day? Well, the answer lies with Joe Pigott, a current player.

As Ardley had discussed, he was exploring other routes and Pigott was one of his other targets, joining from non-league Maidstone United, where he had impressed as an all-round centre-forward, which is something the Dons attack had been crying out for.

When he came into the side, the impact was instantaneous. He linked up well with the likes of Taylor, and Appiah, when he played, and scored some vital goals in some important wins, as they went on to avoid relegation at the end of the season.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg of the impact that could have been so different had Carlton Cole signed.

Had Pigott not been at the club, there would have no doubt been a struggle to find the goals he scored that kept Wimbledon afloat in the 'Great Escape' season and would have meant that the club would have gone down to League Two, and potentially stayed there and stagnated, or worse, been relegated further and struggle on with minimal finances in an ever-growing world of expense.

To go even further, and while it is a wild argument, you could say that if the club had gone with Cole over Pigott in that winter window, that Plough Lane, in all its splendour, would not be the stadium it is today, or even a stadium at all.

It is wild to look at what could have been at such a crazy fork in the road of Wimbledon's history and how things could have changed based on an out-of-form striker's rib injury.