Mitch
Blonde Brigade Grand Wizard
I am intrested in seeing how people would rank our 10 best CBs ever?
1. Campbell
2. Toure
3. Koscielny
4. Mertesacker
5. Keown
6. Adams
7. Gallas
8. Vermealen
9. Luiz
10. Upson
...only considering players from my time as a fan, I know we have had better centre backs than some on this list, but this are the top 10 I have seen.
Also, Adams would have been number 1 and Keown number 3 if I saw both at their peak in the 90s...but since I didn’t, I am putting the others above them who in my time were better, even though they weren’t better defenders.
Upson is probably the weirdest choice, but one of my fav ever matches was Arsenal v Juventus 2001, watching Matthew and Sol dominate Del Piero and Trezeguet in a 3-1 win, is one of my best memories...it was not long after I first started getting into football too, so I am very nostalgic about it, thought Sol and Upson were going to be our centre backs for the next 5-10 years
McLintock was so good you named him twice. Good list though and finding 10 is a struggle.I'll try to do this as best as I possibly can given I've not seen a lot of them.
- Tony Adams (obviously)
- Sol Campbell
- David O'Leary
- McLintock
- Kolo Toure
- Martin Keown
- McLintock
- Laurent Koscielny
- Per Mertesacker
- Viv Anderson (I gotta be honest I had no idea who to put here)
McLintock was so good you named him twice. Good list though and finding 10 is a struggle.
What would be your top ten then...would Kos really not be in it?
Gallas makes Mourinho' best ever 11 (albeit at full back), yet he isn't rated in Arsenal-Mania. He was class here but surround by muppets like Clichy, Eboue and Vermaelen.
He was world class.
He was great for Chelsea, very good for us too up to a point...his last 2 seasons here though, he was an unbelievably negative influence on the dressing room by all accounts.
He was great for Chelsea, very good for us too up to a point...his last 2 seasons here though, he was an unbelievably negative influence on the dressing room by all accounts.
World class?
Do me a favour....
Spent time being Chelsea's best defender as well as Frances best defender. Both teams amongst the best in the world.
But, not world class because his incompetent team mates threw away the league and he kicked off?
Sounds about right!
So basically Kolo Toure, an Invincible who played fantasticly well alongside Sol Campell from 2002 to 2005 or later alongside bloody Senderos (2005/06) was an "incompetent" teammate?
Gallas throwing a tantrum at St. Andrews in 2008, whilst being our skipper, was in terms of behaviour not what you'd expect from a world class CB. Itt even got so bad, that he lost his captaincy late 2008 in a rather poor set of circumstances.
Of course Mourinho rates him more as a LB, because out there in an Mourinho team, you can do little wrong. In the end they were very happy to let him go and get Cole instead.....one of the biggest mistakes from Arsenal in the last twenty years.