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• Manager says last season’s troubles cannot be cured overnight
• Joe Cole completes move to ‘biggest club in the country’

Roy Hodgson has warned Liverpool supporters it will take much more than the arrival of Joe Cole to lift the “doom and gloom” that enveloped the club last season. The manager, speaking after Cole completed his free transfer from Chelsea, urged fans to remain realistic about the club’s prospects as he picks up the pieces from the wreckage of Rafael Benítez’s final season in charge.

Although Hodgson is delighted that Cole has agreed to move to Merseyside, as his rebuilding programme at Anfield starts to gather some momentum, the former Fulham manager said today that he would never want to “dupe” supporters into believing “everything was rosy” because of one signing.

Liverpool missed out on the Champions League after finishing seventh in the Premier League last term and Hodgson acknowledged the disenchantment that accompanied a miserable campaign would not disappear overnight. He has pleaded for understanding from fans and, at the same time, spelled out the need for “a lot more players” to arrive at Anfield before the start of the season if Liverpool are to progress and have a chance of seriously competing again.

“You don’t change doom and gloom, you don’t change disenchantment with a signing or two,” said Hodgson from the club’s training camp in Switzerland. “The Liverpool supporters know that I can’t stand in front of a TV camera and put right some disenchantment that has been going on for several years now with a couple of words or by signing a football player. All we can hope to persuade them is that we are going to be on the right track. We are trying to get things right again.

“I can assure [the Liverpool fans] we’ll make plenty of efforts on the field, and I’ll hope to dispel the doom and disenchantment in that way, but it’s not going to be an overnight thing. Unfortunately, last season was a very disappointing season for the club in every respect, culminating in a popular manager leaving the club – you don’t dispel that with a couple of signings and I wouldn’t ever want to try and dupe the Liverpool public by telling them all is rosy now because Joe Cole is signing. There is a lot more work to do and there are a lot more players needed.”

Progress is already being made on that front. Having already recruited the Serbia international Milan Jovanovic and Cole on free transfers, Liverpool today completed their third signing of the summer when Danny Wilson joined from Rangers in a deal worth £2m initially and up to a further £3m in add-ons.

The 18-year-old central defender, who won the Scottish Football Association and Football Writers’ Young Player of the Year award last season, described the move as a “massive challenge” after passing a medical and signing a three-year contract.

Hodgson’s desire to strengthen the squad further is likely to lead to a number of players on the periphery moving on, with Philipp Degen the latest to be told that he has no future at Anfield. The Switzerland right-back made only three league starts following his arrival from Borussia Dortmund two years ago. “We have had an amicable conversation with Philipp and he wants to play football,” Hodgson said. “We won’t stand in his way and he is free to look for another club.”

Liverpool, who play Grasshopper tonight in their first pre-season match of the summer, remain on the look-out for new owners with Hodgson admitting that Martin Broughton, the club’s chairman, is “trying desperately to find the right people” to provide much-needed new investment. In the meantime, the Liverpool manager has urged supporters to remain patient and be sensible with their demands for success. “I can only hope that the people who watch us are aware of the situation and that they’ve got their feet on the ground like we’ve all got our feet on the ground, and that they’ll give us credit if we deserve any for the efforts we make on the field,” Hodgson said.

Joe ColeLiverpoolTransfer windowStuart Jamesguardian.co.uk

• I will speak to Liverpool and they ‘will explain the real situation’
• Striker will wait until World Cup has finished before talks

Fernando Torres says he wants to know what is really happening at Liverpool before committing his future to the team.

Torres has been linked with a big-money move to sides including Chelsea, Barcelona and Internazionale in recent weeks following Liverpool’s failure to qualify for next season’s Champions League and reports that the Merseyside club have debts of around £350m.

But the Spanish striker says he will seek talks with the board and the new coach, Roy Hodgson, after the World Cup in order to find out exactly what is going on at Anfield.

“I suppose that when the World Cup finishes I will speak to the people at Liverpool and they will explain to me the real situation of how things are at present, the future of the club. And I will talk to the new coach,” he said in an interview with El Mundo Deportivo.

For the moment, however, Torres says he is not thinking beyond the World Cup. “There’s time for that [Liverpool], but I want to finish the World Cup, go on holiday, as I haven’t had a holiday for three years, rest and then there will be time to talk about all of that – the situation isn’t going to change whether we talk soon or later,” he said.

Fernando TorresLiverpoolPremier Leagueguardian.co.uk

Winning the World Cup is all the matters to the midfielder after a difficult and potentially defining season with his club

There are some things you never expect to hear Steven Gerrard saying, and this is one of them. “I’m not really interested at the moment in what’s going on at Liverpool,” the England vice-captain insists, taking a break from altitude training in Austria. “Hopefully things might happen while I’m away this summer. There might be players coming in to help strengthen the team, we’ll have to wait and see, but I won’t consider my future or think about what is going to happen to me until after the World Cup. My focus has got to be on England now.”

Gerrard is not speaking in code here, even though it is easy to put the words “consider” and “future” together and conclude that his appraisal of the Anfield situation not only sounds detached but is edging towards the past tense. It is fair to say Gerrard will always be interested in what happens at Liverpool, wherever he might find himself after the World Cup, and if he has reached a crossroads in his career it will hardly be the first time. The only real difference for a player who turns 30 at the end of the month is that this one could be the last. The two previous ones, unhelpfully coinciding with major international tournaments in 2004 and 2006, bookended Liverpool’s dramatic Champions League success in 2005, after which Gerrard also handed in a transfer request, only to withdraw it 24 hours later.

Though the Chelsea turn-off beckoned invitingly, Gerrard eventually managed to ignore it, turning his back at the same time on the Premier League title he craves and even finding his chances of European glory diminished.

Five years on from Istanbul, Gerrard finds himself with some thinking to do just as another major tournament heaves into view, only this time he knows the drill. This time he wants to keep things simple.

“There has been speculation about my future for the last two or three months, but it seems to have been that way for many years before that,” he says. “I fell into the trap four years ago – in the last World Cup, where I was driving myself mad thinking about my future. I won’t be making that mistake again. I feel as if I am experienced enough now to park issues like that. If other people want to talk about my future I can’t control that. What I can control is my own focus. This time I’m determined to put all my energy into playing for England.”

Gerrard was quoted as saying his head was all over the place during the 2004 European Championship in Portugal, when José Mourinho’s Chelsea first registered a strong interest, and says the same thing happened again two years later when the London club renewed attempts to prise him away from Merseyside. “I hope I have learned from what happened in Germany four years ago,” he says. “You do have quite a lot of time on your hands in World Cups and I used to go back to my room and read the papers and go on the internet, and then I would speak to people at home who were telling me that there was stuff going on.

“I knew that Chelsea were very interested because my agent was telling me. Every time I went back to my room I was going mad thinking about whether I should go to Chelsea or not. Mentally it might have drained me. I don’t know for certain if it did or not but I’m not taking any chances this time. People around me are under strict instructions not to be talking about my club future or any sort of speculation. That’s not important now. What is important is that I have a good World Cup with the team. Agents, friends and family have been told not to mention club stuff to me.”

If only life and football were quite that simple. Already there are suggestions that Gerrard’s relationship with Rafael Benítez is close to breaking point. The obvious way to park the matter would have been to reconfirm his intention of staying at Liverpool. By not doing so Gerrard is practically confirming that there is “club stuff” to sort out once he gets back from South Africa, and if that is the case there is every chance that he has a shrewd idea what the future may hold already and merely intends to maintain a diplomatic silence until after the World Cup.

Fabio Capello has made it clear he does not wish to see his World Cup preparations disrupted by agents or bidding wars between clubs. A player who by his own admission was driven mad by indecision four years ago would surely wish to remove uncertainty at an early stage rather than a later one. Young players are free to spout the line that they will concentrate on the World Cup and see what happens after that, as an already well-travelled James Milner has just done. A disappointed Liverpool captain with maybe one move left to make, and that the first of his career, needs to plan a little more carefully.

There is no doubt, for all his love of Liverpool, that Gerrard is disappointed. It is almost painful to ask him about it, so obvious is his weary dejection with answering the same questions he has been asking himself. “Last season was a massive disappointment after finishing second the previous year. The challenge was to go a step further but we ended up taking steps backwards,” he says. “That’s the disappointing thing. It was a very difficult season, both personally and for everyone else in the squad, to deal with the amount of setbacks that we’ve had. That’s gone now, though, I’ve got to put all that behind me. There’s nothing I can do to change what happened.

“What is in my control is what happens with England from this point on. As a footballer I look forward rather than back, and there’s a massive tournament round the corner. It’s not really difficult switching focus between club and country. Once you start training, you get talking to the lads about World Cups and the banter starts flying, that helps you put what’s happened at club level firmly behind you. There’s a long time after the World Cup, once its over, to change your focus back to Liverpool. This could be my last World Cup. The players coming up behind me are so good, I’m not sure I’ll be able to hold down a regular place in four years’ time, and the same is true for a few of the other lads.

“It’s a last chance to shine in a World Cup, perhaps even to win one, but without getting too carried away we would just like to do ourselves justice. Talking to different groups of players in the squad there’s an excitement there and a determination after the setback of not qualifying for the Euros. We feel as though we owe it to the nation to deliver this time around.”

Wary of what happened four years ago, when fighting talk was a prologue to some wretched performances in the group stage, Gerrard is careful to stress the positive note without sounding boastful or complacent. Capello has just claimed all his players are confident they can win the World Cup, and there is no harm in that, though it is never a good idea to broadcast the fact too loudly in advance, especially with a record like England’s. “We’ve underachieved over the years,” Gerrard admits. “I think everyone around the world knows the tools are there in England’s armoury to do well in a World Cup. The challenge is to go out there and prove it. It’s easy for me to sit here and say: ‘Yeah, we’re one of the favourites, it’s going to be great, we’re going to do this or that.’ Talk is too easy.

“We’ve got to get out of the group first, and then get out of the last 16. Even then there is a mental situation with this team about failing to get past the last eight. Everyone knows what happened in the last few tournaments. If we get past the last eight then the show is going to start, but there will be some big tests before we get to that point.”

At least in his self-imposed isolation unit in South Africa, the umbilical link to Liverpool temporarily severed, Gerrard will not be short of scouse company. He is delighted Jamie Carragher is back in the squad, not least because he can now stop badgering him to change his mind.

“I’m pleased for Carra, and I’m pleased for myself as well, the work I’ve put in,” he says. “I spoke to him all the time, right from the time he took the decision to step down. I understood his reasons but even at the start I told him to take his time, and then take more time. I wanted Carra here all along because he’s a top player. I play with him every day in training and in games and he keeps Liverpool together.”

There is also Wayne Rooney, with whom Gerrard has a developing relationship on and off the pitch. “Wayne and I are good friends anyway, and before games we are always talking about where we want each other to go,” he says. “There is a good understanding. Wayne is a fantastic player with great movement, and Fabio has given me a licence to get forward from the left and go inside. He wants me to link with Wayne. It’s easy to link with top players and I think everyone in the country is hoping he can take the form he is in at the moment into the World Cup. I hope so too, because if he does, I’m confident we can do well.”

Steven GerrardEnglandLiverpoolWorld Cup 2010World Cup 2010 Group CPaul Wilsonguardian.co.uk