Top 5 favourite Everton Centre Backs

[Aberblue]

Brian Labone and Kevin Ratcliffe would be my dream combination. As well as being superb players, they were great captains too.

Jagielka and Lescott was possibly the best centre back pairing I've seen in recent years.

Dave Watson was an inspiring player.

Gough, Mountfield, Yobo, Hurst, Kenyon, Lyons, Weir were all players I enjoyed watching. I wish we'd got Colin Todd and Richard Gough at a much earlier stage in their careers.

 

[kev]

They don't necessarily have to be the best - but who did you like to see as a centre half / centre back in say the last 50 years.

Mine are:-

1) Labone
2) Ratcliffe
3) Mountfield
4) Dave Watson
5) Jagielka

Lyons / Gough / Hurst / Mountfield honourable mentions.

Great to see Brian Labone get a mention (by you and quite a few others) He would certainly be in my top five.
Technically though, none of us saw him play for Everton in the last 50 years, as his last game was in 1971 ? ?
My God! We are all getting old ?

 

[Jacob]

Joe Yobo was great when he was on a good day. But when he was on a hair raising back pass day,
I used to chain smoke... sometimes with my mouth.....

 

[blue61]

3rd page and no mentions for Glen Kealey, vastly underrated in my opinion.

 

[Vaughan]

Lescott
Jagielka
Stones
Yobo
Stubbs

 

[Noble Savage]

Ratcliffe
Watson
Gough
Johnny H
Distin

 

[Blue Roo]

Coady
Tarks
---
Stones
---
Jags
Lescott

 

[GlosBlue]

For my era, that + 'Unsy' + Lescott (who did CB and admittedly LB, too).

Likin' the way Tarks and Coady shaping up and achieving what those guys did would be fine by me.

Forgot about Lescott! He'd replace Distin for me. Always thought Unsworth was a left back for some reason.

 

[Stevie Nicks Bootleg]

Forgot about Lescott! He'd replace Distin for me. Always thought Unsworth was a left back for some reason.

Unsy was both....I always thought Lescott's best season for us was when he was at left back too.

 

[BluePeadar]

Dave Watson
Richard Gough
Bilic there I said it , big woop
Keown
Ratcliffe

 

[Stevie Nicks Bootleg]

I read somewhere ( it could have been the book Everton in the 90's by Jim Keoghan) but with regards to the Sheeds and Martin Keown incident, Keown brought his brother along with him to that team outing, and Sheeds kind of starts taking the piss out of him.

Obviously Martin Keown would be fairly upset about that, so he decided to give Sheeds a nice sweet dig. I have great time for Sheeds he was a great player for us, but he was bang out of order with his conduct there. That smack that Keown gave him was well deserved really!

I'm pretty sure it was financial circumstances that lead to Keowns departure, i'm not sure that he actually wanted to leave at all. Colin Harvey just wasn't able to integrate the new players, in with the old guard who won us all those trophies. Both the older players and the newer ones just didn't seem to get along with each other, and that proved very costly indeed for both Everton and Colin Harvey.

I suppose it was difficult to turn down a club like Arsenal anyway and the fee was good. But i think it was one of those scenarios where it began to dawn on us that we could no longer compete with certain clubs in the market (whereas a few years before Cottee would choose Everton ahead of them).

 

[Eggs]

One of the best I ever saw in blue was Colin Todd a fantastic athlete as fast and agile as a cat he suffocated any striker who dared take him on. Not sure if we played him as CB thoughView attachment 188220

….thought he was disappointing for us.

 

[4737carlin]

Joe Yobo was great when he was on a good day. But when he was on a hair raising back pass day,
I used to chain smoke... sometimes with my mouth.....

I liked Yobo, but some of his passes across the box gave me blood pressure issues, but yeah good player

 

[b-rad]

Watson, Distin, Jags, Stones, maybe Yobo.

 

[Dancing Pat]

Great to see Brian Labone get a mention (by you and quite a few others) He would certainly be in my top five.
Technically though, none of us saw him play for Everton in the last 50 years, as his last game was in 1971 ? ?
My God! We are all getting old ?

I deffo saw him but would’ve been about 6/7 years old, but obviously couldn’t appreciate him at that young age.
But I do remember his testimonial as it was one of my first games under the lights at Goodison! I don’t think he actually played in the testimonial though.