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.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).But there wasn't a single sentence spoken about the performance of a player who is rapidly assuming unsung hero status at Everton.So let's put that right straight away.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.The Dutchman has remained a fixture ever since.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?Not me.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.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.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.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.

Source: Liverpool_Echo