COSTA IS A WIND-UP MERCHANT, BUT HE’S WORTH ALL THE TROUBLE

I’VE always thought that Diego Costa (right) looks like someone who belongs in a Spaghetti Western. He’s a bandit and I have to say that I would have loved to play against him and with him. He’s a player who would have been right at home here in the 1980s.

The attractive part to me, when I see him play, is that he appears to enjoy every duel that comes his way. He wants to be the instigator. He wants to have you concentrating not on your game but on him. You know he’s going to wind you up. He’s going to stand on you. He’s going to bump into you when the ball’s nowhere near you. He’ll leave a foot here, an elbow there.

He is just Mr Aggro and yes, I’d certainly have fancied going up against a competitor like that. He has just arrived at Wolves at 33 — an age when there should be plenty of life left in him, though it’s what’s going on in his head which is less certain.

He has been a difficult boy to manage wherever he has gone and, as his manager, you have to be prepared to look the other way on occasions.

It’s a trade-off. As a manager, you go into this deciding it’s worth putting up with the special attention you’ll have to give him, because of what he brings. I look at Wolves and feel that goals are the last piece of the jigsaw. They have some lovely players who create chances every game. But Raul Jimenez is not getting them the goals he was before the serious head injury he suffered nearly two years ago.

Fabio Silva, who struggled in the Premier League, has gone out on loan to Anderlecht. Sasa Kalajdzic was injured on his debut earlier this month. Costa has been back in Brazil at Atletico Mineiro since August last year and hasn’t played since

January, but he’ll be fine. He’ll stand in the tunnel, looking defenders right in the eye, thinking: ‘I’m going to leave a bit on you at the first opportunity and see what reaction I get.’ That’s still very much with him. I’m not sure you ever lose it.

It’s personal with him. If he doesn’t go out every time to get into an argument and square up to someone, he feels he isn’t taking part in the game. And that will rub off on team-mates who are not quite up for the fight. If they see someone who wants to fight everybody and anybody, they’ll respond to that. Some aspects of his conduct have been unacceptable. Pretending to cough on reporters, when he played for Atletico Madrid at Anfield at the start of the Covid pandemic, was not something we should ever see in our football. He’s better than that and doesn’t want to be remembered for it.

But there is nothing like experience in life. Costa brings a lot of it, from the top levels of football, with Chelsea and Atletico. A striker the wrong side of 30 will have to be quite special if he is going to get goals in our league. I think Costa will.