Following Football premier league experts give their top five defenders in the Premier league era. Expert One: MARTIN KEOWN 1. Jaap Stam What Man Utd achieved with him there made it an outrage that he was allowed to leave. Without him, they wouldn’t have won the treble. 2. Sol Campbell and 3. Tony Adams Two of my colleagues who I played with, and we all complemented each other’s game. Tony had such fantastic leadership qualities and Sol was like a run-away train when he got going. 4. Vincent Kompany He is now such an outstanding player and his qualities are obvious because of the players around him. 5. Rio Ferdinand Roy Hodgson had to choose between Rio and John Terry, and I’m having the same difficulty. Terry is a fantastic player but I played with Rio early in his career and he was so calm. He developed so well, was quick and he became a ruthless defender. At first I was running past him to cover him and I thought he needed to work on his game, but it wasn’t like that towards the end of my career! He kept running past me! Expert two: LEE CLAYTON 1. Rio Ferdinand; 2.Tony Adams; 3. John Terry; 4. Jamie Carragher; 5. Steve Bruce Six titles for Ferdinand. A wonderful, gifted defender. If he had been Italian, Spanish, German or Dutch… you know how the rest goes. The other four would head it away. Kompany can play out from the back and defend for his life, but he doesn’t make my top five. Not yet, anyway. Expert Three: IAN LADYMAN 1. Nemanja Vidic; 2. Jaap Stam; 3. Rio Ferdinand; 4. John Terry; 5. Tony Adams. Football has changed but the art of the central defender hasn’t. Tackle them, head it, clear it. These guys have all been masters of the nuts and bolts of their trade. A couple of them could even pass the ball in a straight line, too. Expert Four: NEIL ASHTON 1. Marcel Desailly; 2. John Terry; 3. Tony Adams; 4. Jaap Stam; 5. Ricardo Carvalho A World Cup winner with France in 1998, Desailly made the game look easy with his poise and panache. Outstanding on the ball, his positioning was first class and his ability to talk team mates through games is unparalleled in the modern era. Taught Terry everything he knows. Expert Five: MATT LAWTON 1. Rio Ferdinand; 2. John Terry; 3. Nemanja Vidic; 4. Jaap Stam; 5. Sol Campbell. It is so difficult to select just five given the quality of the central defenders we have had in the Premier League. But for me, these five had everything – a commanding presence, ability on the ball and, most important of all, they were natural born leaders.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Mar 2014 11:34:22 +0000
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