[DrWu]

Mine would be:

GK: Banks
LB: Cole
CB: Moore
CB: Butcher
RB: Arnfield
LM: Barnes
DFM: Stiles
CM: Ball
RM: Gascoigne
AMF: Charlton
CF: Lineker


Bench: Robson, Gerrard, Greaves, Keegan, Adams, Shilton

Great team obviously, contentious areas are LM - who else but Barnes? Even though he never delivered at times, I can't think of another unless playing Gascoigne at LM. That would open up options at RM I know. Barnes was class though. The DFM position is a toughie too, I don't know much about stiles but I know he was rated highly.

[Jexa]

No Matthews, really?

[ste]

GK - Banks
LB - Pearce
CB - Moore
CB - Walker
RB - Neville
LM - Finney
DM - Robson
CM - Gascoigne
CM - Charlton
RM - Matthews
CF - Greaves

Subs - Shilton, Edwards, Gerrard, Beckham, Lineker, Shearer.

[Sticky]

                               
                                   P. Shilton

                            B. Moore      J. Charlton      
          P. Neal                                            S. Pearce

                                       
                                      
            T. Finney                                    S. Matthews
                          P. Gascoigne   B. Charlton     

                                 
                              J. Greaves
                                        G. Lineker   


G. Banks
T. Adams
D. Walker
Bryan Robson
D. Beckham
K. Keegan
A. Shearer

[DrWu]

I find it hard to judge how good players before the 60's were - not much footage and a very different game. The formations were so different I'm sure even the best of the teams then would get destroyed now by even a crappy non league team.

Oh, also: You'll never beat Des Walker!

This post has been edited by DrWu: 21 May 2012 - 07:33 PM

[ste]

I've always found that argument strange. Would a team these days annihilate a team from the 60's? Yes if the team from the 60's continued to train in the 60's way (i.e. a few laps around the pitch then down the pub for a few fags and a skin full) and employed the tactics of those days. Surely though if this fantasy game was to happen you would want judge it on pure natural footballing skills only, and not on who had the best fitness/conditioning coaches.

I would imagine that any of the players listed would have excelled in the premier league today as they would have had todays training techniques at hand. You can't train raw talent.

Also interesting to note that

a) Nearly every player that's been named so far is/was not only an exceptional talent but a born leader, captaining club or country many times (apart from Cole who's just a cock - but still a great player). Is being a great footballer a mental thing or is it more like the school yard where the best player automatically gets the armband?

b) No single generation seems to have more than 1 or 2 players in anyones team. Not the world cup winning team of '66, the better team of 70, or the current crop of the <cough> golden generation.

I watched the 70's world cup a few years ago and tbh that England team would wipe the floor with the current lot.

[DrWu]

The answer to that argument is another unknown though. You don't know how they would perform given today's standards. Perhaps they were great playing in that system, or at that level of fitness? Who knows?

In terms of pure natural footballing ability we can't take anyone out of their reality or time and judge them in this way - all you can see is vids and then try and put it into the context of what you read and wiki entries etc. There's no way to judge it.

Some of them are obvious - Charlton for example was just an amazing player because we can see his goals, see what he won, feel his legacy. It's documented. That's all we can go on.

I do think the game changed in the late 50's dramatically in terms of strategy and style and fitness etc. Players before, say, 1960, are exteremely hard to judge by todays standards.

Having said that, you think Des Walker is one of the 2 best CB in the history of English Football? And no-one has chosen Dixie Dean.

This post has been edited by DrWu: 21 May 2012 - 08:53 PM

[Sticky]

John Charles is the best centre back who ever lived. He was Welsh though, poor sod.

[ste]

Yes. He's not the eye catching, ball playing, CB like Moore. Neither is he the man mountain of Butcher/Adams, but as you have already posted 'You'll never beat Des Walker!'. He is the perfect insurance at the back. Great man marker and fast enough to get 2 or 3 bites at the cherry if he made a mistake. He could then pass the ball 3 yards to the nearest footballer :P

If it was just about ability on the ball then I would swap him for Edwards (A man who I pick purely for the fact that Charlton referred to him as the only footballer that made him feel inferior).

I accept that footballers from before our time, or more specifically, the time of proper TV coverage are only being picked on reputation, histories or statistics. I have picked 3 on legend alone (Matthews, Finney and Edwards), and another 4 on very limited footage, mainly of the 66 and 70 world cups. Having said that if people still talk about them 50 years later they must have been something special. Does make arguing the inclusion/exclusion of them pretty hard though.

Maybe another topic would be a Premier League XI, or even a Premier League XI of players that never won a League medal. I would imagine that could cause a few arguments.

[OneJoelFifty]

I remember Steven Gerrard's first goal for Liverpool. He beat Des Walker.

[DrWu]

No JOEL. You'll never beat Des Walker.

[OneJoelFifty]

Also, I don't really have enough knowledge of football before the late 80s (when I started watching) to give an educated view on this topic. I suspect anyone that does have strong opinions on players that were around before they were born is relying a lot on heresay. There's an awful chance that John Terry will be remembered as one of England's greatest defenders, just because some people that view that time period in their football-viewing lives fondly will say as such.

[Earthy]

all wrong, there be no women in the best 11 , you are all sexist women hating pigs.