Source: Liverpool_Echo
David Prentice: Why Johnny Heitinga should be Everton FC’s permanent centre-back
ON another rocking, rousing night at Goodison Park, the bouqets were being tossed around with gay abandon.[LNB]Landon Donovan, Leon Osman, Tim Cahill, Leighton Baines . . . all came in for richly deserved words of praise (only half a pat on the back from the manager for the matchwinner, mind).[LNB]But there wasn't a single sentence spoken about the performance of a player who is rapidly assuming unsung hero status at Everton.[LNB]So let's put that right straight away.[LNB]When Johnny Heitinga was ushered in at centre-half alongside Lucas Neill last autumn it was one of the last remaining defensive options available to David Moyes.[LNB]The Dutchman has remained a fixture ever since.[LNB]And when Joseph Yobo, Phil Jagielka and Sylvain Distin are all fit and available again - a moment which is edging ever closer - who could honestly say Heitinga should be the man to make way?[LNB]Not me.[LNB]Bought as a right-back cum holding midfield player, it's ironic that a man called Heitinga was only thought of as an emergency centre-back because of his lack of inches.[LNB]At five feet 11, the Dutchman is no Oompa Loompa (despite his international colours), but in this country we seem conditioned by years of aerial targetmen to expect centre-backs to be six feet two inches and 15 stone of ripped muscularity.[LNB]Those days have gone - the presence of Didier Drogba and Kevin Doyle in the Premier League notwithstanding - and the performances of defenders like Fabio Cannovaro, Alessandro Costacurta, Jamie Carragher and Ricardo Carvalho prove it.[LNB]Happily David Moyes doesn't seem to harbour the same kind of hang-ups about height in his centre-halfs as a previous Blues boss. Colin Todd (five feet nine in his stockinged feet) was undeniably the classiest, centre-half of his era.
