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Aston Villa's out of favour midfielder Joe Cole is set to complete a permanent move to Coventry City this week.

The Sky Blues are hopeful of completing a deal in time for Cole to play against League One promotion rivals Walsall next Tuesday.

Cole is in the process of negotiating a release from his Villa contract which still has six months to run.

The 34-year-old, who joined the Ricoh Arena club on loan in mid-October, is currently being excused training at Coventry, while he resolves his situation at Villa.

Coventry boss Tony Mowbray has confirmed that Cole will have to take a significant pay cut to join them.

“I think the player will help us but there’s a number of discussions to be had, not just with our football club and the clubs concerned,” he explained.

“There’s no way we could pay similar sorts of salary levels so they’ll have discussions with their parent clubs and after that we need to have discussions with their advisors. So there’s lots of stuff to be talked about.”

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