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From Joe Cole to a certain Chelsea striker, here are our nominations for the season’s biggest failures

Welcome to guardian.co.uk’s review of the 2010-11 Premier League season. As the campaign draws to a close, we want you to help us find the most spectacular goal, biggest flop and best signing, as well as the winner in seven other categories. Our writers have nominated some contenders, but this is just the starting point for the conversation: we would like your suggestions so that we can compile the best into final polls that you can vote on. As the season obviously doesn’t finish until Sunday afternoon, the nomination blogs will be open until later that evening, with the polls then open from Monday 23 May. Thanks.

Joe Cole

Looking back, it seems bizarre that the capture of this Chelsea cast-off was considered a huge coup for Liverpool (not as bizarre, of course, as Steven Gerrard’s claim that Cole was as good as Leo Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo). But it is also odd that his impact at Anfield has been quite so pitiful. From the moment on his debut when he copped a red card for an uncharacteristic lunge at Laurent Koscielny, Cole, along with Roy Hodgson, came to represent the curiously extreme underachievement that maimed Liverpool’s early season. Just as Hodgson seemed to forget, upon his arrival at Anfield, all the things he had done well at Fulham and retained only the negative, Cole’s once-vaunted control and trickery went to pieces and Liverpool were left with only a nervous wreck. Hodgson has redeemed himself at West Brom, Cole still looks forlorn. Mind you, at least no one is denying that he ever existed. Paul Konchesky, on the other hand …

Andrey Arshavin

The Russian international is one of the most experienced players in the Arsenal squad yet still seems a Premier League ingénu. When younger team-mates needed inspiration, or even just a dash of vim, especially when Cesc Fábregas and Samir Nasri were out, where was the 29-year-old Arshavin, who unquestionably has the ability to provide both those things and more? Toddling around the wing hoping no one noticed him. He played more league games than anyone else at Arsenal during this campaign but, proportional to calibre, he contributed less than anyone.

Mikel John Obi

This was the season in which the enigma of Mikel was resolved: he is not a slow-burning talent, he is a flaming waste of money. The player who was once voted second only to Leo Messi at the Under-20 World Cup and provoked a costly squabble for his services between Manchester United and Chelsea has slipped into a rut and failed utterly to clamber out of it. Carlo Ancelotti devoted much time and energy to trying to coax him out of the constraints that José Mourinho had imposed on him but Mikel showed that he has become comfortable, even complacent, in them. Ancelotti asked him to be more progressive in his play and even start scoring goals: by way of reply, Mikel has managed three shots on target in 27 appearances. With the injuries to Frank Lampard and Michael Essien this season Chelsea needed Mikel to step up. He continued to slouch.

Mauro Boselli

If you blinked, you won’t have seen him. If you stared like a stalker at every little thing he did, you won’t ever have seen him looking dangerous. Wigan’s record signing arrived for £6m from Argentina’s Estudiantes, where he had thrashed in 32 goals in 57 games, and, after eight Premier League games and no goals, was ushered off on loan to Genoa. If Wigan go down, it will mainly be because they invested in a shoddy striker. West Ham could say the same – isn’t that right, Robbie Keane? – but that would be only partly true: because their defence, midfield and management have been dire too.

Fernando Torres

Don’t go thinking that a goal created by a puddle against West bloody Ham gets you off the hook, El washed-up-looking Niño.

Joe ColeLiverpoolArsenalChelseaWigan AthleticFernando TorresPremier Leagueguardian.co.uk

• Manager hails roles of Damien Comolli and Ian Ayre
• ‘We need to wait a few years before we judge’

Kenny Dalglish has hailed the managerial structure installed at Liverpool by Fenway Sports Group but cautioned it will take years before its work in the transfer market can be judged a success.

FSG, Liverpool’s owners, promoted Damien Comolli to director of football and Ian Ayre to managing director last month and Dalglish is working closely with the Frenchman to identify targets for this summer despite not being appointed permanent manager as yet. Comolli and Ayre were at Ewood Park on Monday night to monitor Blackburn Rovers’ coveted central defender Phil Jones against Manchester City and they presided over the signings of Andy Carroll and Luis Suárez in January, although the Uruguay striker had been on Liverpool’s agenda since the final year of Rafael Benítez’s reign.

Dalglish believes whoever is in charge at Liverpool can operate alongside a director of football but, with the club having been held back by numerous transfer mistakes in recent years, he also says it will take more than the Suárez and Carroll deals to prove the merits of the partnership on transfers.

“The structure is great now with Ian as managing director and Damien as director of football,” the Liverpool manager said. “We said at the time they were two great appointments by the club. As for transfers, it remains to be seen. We have Andy and Luis in and they have done very well but it is only two. We need to wait a few years before we judge it but certainly they are two positive appointments.”

Dalglish believes Liverpool will witness further improvement in Suárez and Carroll next season. “Most players are better after a pre-season with their new club and that will apply to Andy and Luis next year,” he said. Those plans are in jeopardy due to international commitments, however, with Stuart Pearce determined to take Carroll to the European Under-21 Championship in Denmark in June and Suárez heading for the Copa América in Argentina in July.

“Luis will be away until 24 July if Uruguay get to the final,” he said. “It’s not helpful but there’s nothing we can do about it and we just have to get on with it. The competition is there and it’s a huge event for the South Americans and we’ve got to respect that.”

Carroll trained on Friday as he attempts to overcome a knee injury in time to face his former club Newcastle United at Anfield on Sunday, while Liverpool have denied reports in Belgium of a £20m bid for the young Anderlecht striker Romelu Lukaku, a Chelsea target.

Jamie Carragher will make the 665th appearance of his 14-year Liverpool career against Newcastle, a landmark that puts him joint second in the club’s all-time list alongside Emlyn Hughes and Ray Clemence, behind Ian Callaghan. Dalglish said: “He’s been a real compliment to this football club. His record speaks for itself. Talent is a good starting point, starting in the first team at 18 is another good starting point and not picking up too many injuries helps, but the most important thing is his ability and his desire and commitment to this football club.”

LiverpoolKenny DalglishAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk

After a match-winning performance at Bolton the Argentinian has set his sights on overturning Chelsea

Maxi Rodríguez would not be a Liverpool player had John W Henry completed his takeover 12 months ago. Aged 29 and given a lucrative three-year contract late in the negotiations that secured his exit from Atlético Madrid, the Argentina international is among many at Anfield who represent the antithesis of Henry’s sabermetric approach to the future. Not that calculus ever prevented a player from making his mark.

With one toe-poke against Bolton Wanderers last Sunday Rodríguez released Liverpool from the ignominy of the relegation zone, delivered a first league away win since April and gave the manager, Roy Hodgson, the first three points on his travels in 14 months. He also lifted a sense of foreboding surrounding the encounter with Chelsea tomorrow while enhancing his reputation before a hung Liverpool jury.

The 86th‑minute winner capped a fine overall performance from Rodríguez at Bolton. The midfielder started due only to Dirk Kuyt’s ankle injury and his place tomorrow is threatened by the Dutchman’s rapid recovery. But 10 months into an indifferent Liverpool career Rodríguez admits his adaptation period is over. The ability that brought 41 caps for his country and the captaincy at Atlético, he says, was not misplaced during transit in January.

“After eight years in Spain where the style of play is not nearly as physical as it is in England I did need some time to adapt to playing here,” he said. “Football is football all over the world, you always play with the ball but it does take some time to get used to new styles. Now, though, I feel I understand English football very well. I feel as though I know my team-mates a lot better and they know me, and that is helping me play a lot better.”

It obviously did not help Rodríguez’s adjustment that the manager who brought him to Anfield, Rafael Benítez, was gone five months later or that, as Hodgson stresses and the appointment of Damien Comolli as director of football strategy illustrates, he is at a club in transition. The midfielder believes there are more profound differences between Hodgson and Benítez than their recent public assessments on the state of the Liverpool squad.

“All managers have their own style and the new manager who arrived in the summer has a different one to the manager who left. They are not particularly similar in the way they do things or what they want us to do, so we have all had to adapt to the style of today’s Liverpool manager. The important thing is that we have the players to do that, to let the team play higher up the pitch as the manager wants. We have not had a good start to the season at all but now we are getting our confidence back and in a little while we will be going the right way up the table.”

Consecutive wins over Blackburn, Bolton and Napoli have improved belief at Liverpool but Hodgson has resisted every invitation to proclaim that a corner has been turned. Whether his reticence is based on the impending visit of the champions, fluctuating performance levels against Bolton and the Italians or an acceptance the Anfield faithful is still to be won over is unclear. Late, dramatic victories such as the last two games do resonate, however, and Rodríguez is adamant there will be no inferiority complex against Carlo Ancelotti’s team.

“The most important thing with a new manager is results. If you are winning games and the players are full of confidence, then they can change styles much more quickly. If things go wrong and results do not come, then it is much more complicated. That’s why the win at Bolton was very important for all of us. We have been working hard and we deserved to win. It felt like it could be the start of our comeback.

“We have always believed in our team and in ourselves as players and we believe that this team can beat anyone. We are in a good frame of mind and we are starting to show our ability after a problem with our confidence early in the season. There is no reason why we cannot win comfortably at home.”

LiverpoolRoy HodgsonRafael BenítezAndy Hunterguardian.co.uk