Gio
★★★★★★★★
Yeah fair points - always key to take into account the wider environment. For me the current generation of Premier League centre-halves are one of the best over the last 25 years or so. If you plonked today's guys into mid-1990s Premier League, they'd compare very well IMO. Perhaps not as suited to the more direct crossing-based game, but much more adept against clever movement from nimble strikers in Europe, which was usually a major failing at the time. And they look better than most of the top guys, Kompany apart, from the first half of the 2010s. For me the current generation only fall short of the sweet spot of the defenders in the second half of the 2000s, albeit they were slightly different beasts as the contain-and-counter model of the best English teams from that era required a different defensive skillset than the more expansive approach in place today.That is not a fair comparison. Those CB were facing very different challenges to the ones today. 10 years ago nobody had the attacking power of City or even Liverpool or Spurs nowadays. I am not saying those teams were weaker overall but attacking wise, they indeed were. 10 years ago almost everybody played a more patient game where the big encounters were boxing matches with two teams sitting off each other and waiting to capitalize on mistakes. The best teams in us and Chelsea and briefly Liverpool relied more on the individual brilliance of Ronaldo, Torres and Drogba to unlock those big games. It is a totally different ballgame now with many teams pressing high and committing more men forward. It makes them concede more goals but it also means the CBs deal with a different challenge. That's not of course to say the defenders on your list were not world class because they did what was needed in their specific environment but I am not sure they would fare the same way in today's PL as John Terry himself admitted when talking about the current City team.