TEAM OF THE DECADE
Our resident expert Chris Dunlavy picks his all-star XI
FROM the rise of Bournemouth to the fall of Sunderland, ten years can feel like an awfully long time in football.
And as the decade draws to a close, what better time to look back on some of the stars who graced the EFL in those years? Here is our pick of the bunch, neatly arranged in the 4-2-31 formation that is now more commonplace than halfand-half scarves.
KASPER SCHMEICHEL
Leeds have made a few blunders in the transfer market over recent years, but letting
Schmeichel join
Leicester in 2011 was surely one of the worst.
Solid and assured as the Whites finished seventh in their first season following promotion f r o m League One, the Dane was effectively kicked out when Leicester lodged a £1.5m bid - the exact same amount Leeds had paid Notts County for his services a year earlier.
“We’ve decided that we’re going to sign two new goalkeepers and Kasper will not be first choice,” said then-owner Ken Bates. “Now he has a decision to make.”
And decide he did, turning in three sensational seasons for Leicester culminating in promotion from the Championship and - famously - a Premier League title. Now 33, Schmeichel is widely regarded as one of the best keepers in the top flight.
BRUNO
When Bruno signed for Brighton in the summer of 2012, Seagulls supporters didn’t exactly line the arrivals hall at Gatwick.
Yet if fans were underwhelmed, it wouldn’t last. Over the next seven seasons, Bruno would perform with remarkable consistency, his body seemingly immune to the ageing process. Up and down, inside and out. Game after game after game.
Twice named in the Championship team of the year (aged 35 and 36), he missed just four games as Brighton won promotion in 2016-17.
“To put it simply,” said Chris Hughton when Bruno finally called it quits in the summer, “he’s an outstanding player, an outstanding professional and is an outstanding person.”
WES MORGAN
Morgan is the only player this decade to feature in three separate Championship teams of the season. It’s easy to see why.
Quick, colossal and adept at pretty much every aspect of defending, the centre-back was the cornerstone of Billy Davies’ entertaining Nottingham Forest team and, later, Leicester City’s dominant ascent to the Premier League.
“It is one thing to watch him on TV,” said Claudio Ranieri, under whose tutelage Morgan lifted the Premier League trophy in 2016. “But it is another thing to watch him train and in matches because then you realise that he is strong, he is tall, he is big, he is fast - he is unbelievable.”
Championship strikers had already known that for years.
JASON SHACKELL
On the face of it, there was nothing special about Shackell. He wasn’t particularly quick. He couldn’t ping it out from the back. For a player of 6ft 4ins, he didn’t even win that many headers.
Yet so effectively did Shackell anticipate and organise that he rarely needed to do anything dramatic.
Danger, more often than not, was snuffed out at source. Already a veteran of two promotions when the decade kicked off, he won Barnsley’s player of the year award in 2010-11, then Derby’s a year later. Signed by Burnley the following season, Shackell anchored the side that won a shock promotion under Sean Dyche in 2014 and subsequently played every game in the Premier League.
Still slogging away with Lincoln at the age of 36, Shackell finished last season in the League Two team of the year.
IAN HARTE
By the time Harte pitched up at Carlisle in 2009, most people assumed the Irishman was long retired.
Three seasons in Spain and two years getting splinters at Blackpool and Sunderland had rendered the left-back’s Champions League heyday a distant memory.
Harte, though, was anything but a busted flush. As deadly as ever from any kind of set-piece, he scored 18 goals in a single season for the Cumbrians, then joined Reading and netted 11 times to finish as the Royals’ second-highest scorer in 2010-11.
Though less prolific the following season, his defensive work helped Reading win the Championship title. Harte even had time to add another promotion to his CV, going up with Bournemouth in 2015 before calling it quits at the age of 37.
RUBEN NEVES
Neves shouldn’t have been anywhere near the Championship. But for the influence of super-agent Jorge Mendes, Wolves couldn’t have dreamt of signing a man who - at just 22 had already captained Porto in the Champions League.
Initially, his arrival was met with scepticism. Could a young and inexperienced kid possibly justify his record £15m fee?
The answer, emphatically, was yes. Peerless vision. Spectacular goals. He even thundered into tackles. For nine months, the Black Country’s answer to Andrea Pirlo made the rest of the division look like pub players after a heavy night.
Incredibly, Fulham’s Ryan Sessegnon beat the Portuguese maestro to the player of the year award, but nobody was fooled.
The Championship had never seen a player of
Neves’ class
– and may not do so again.
OLLIE NORWOOD
If you want to win promotion, sign Ollie Norwood.
If that’s not written in a coaching manual, then it should be.
Brighton in 2017. Fulham in 2018. Sheffield United in 2019. All of them posted the former Manchester United trainee in the engine room and ended up in the Premier League.
That’s no coincidence. Tactit-piecder cally smart, lethal from set es and a midfield all-round of deceptive technical proficiency, Norwood has much in common with James Milner.
As such he is often underratBrighlham, ed - not least by B ton and Ful who felt he was too slow slight for the top flight.
Currrentarring ly sta in Sheffield United’s reable marka push for Europe,
Norwood has put any such worries to bed.
PABLO HERNANDEZ
By common consensus, the current Leeds team is one of the best the Championship has ever seen. Yet even in such company, Hernandez shines bright.
The Spaniard is that rare beast in second-tier football - an out-and-out technician who lets his technique and vision do the talking.
Whether out wide or as a No.10, Hernandez can play passes nobody else has even seen, and find a yard of space down the darkest dead end. When he plays well, Leeds play well, and that is the mark of the man. At 34, injuries are creeping in; enjoy him while you can.
ADEL TAARABT
Taarabt did not track back. He did not adhere to tactics and systems. He didn’t tackle, and rarely passed.
But Neil Warnock coaxed performances of such brilliance out of the maverick Moroccan that in 2010-11, his twinkling toes propelled QPR all the way to the Premier League.
It wasn’t easy, or conventional. Such a liability was Taarabt defensively that Warnock threatened to fine any player who passed to him outside the opposition half.
Yet he was also unstoppable. Quick, skilful and unpredictable, Championship defenders were tied in knots on a weekly basis. By the end, he’d scored 19 times and almost single-handedly won Rangers the title.
Never again would Taarabt find such devastating form. But for that one season, he was dynamite.
WILFRIED ZAHA
If Neves is the best player to have graced the Championship this decade, Zaha is easily the most exciting.
His full debut came on the opening day of the 2010-11 campaign, and was largely a matter of necessity. Crystal Palace, out of administration by a matter of hours, barely had enough players to fill the dressing room. Yet puzzled looks of ‘Wilfried who?’ soon became gasps of delight as the 17-year-old’s audacious skills made absolute mugs of an experienced Leicester defence. For the next three years, Zaha’s pace, invention and sheer cheek lit up the division.
“He was a player who grew up playing on the streets,” said George Burley. “And he plays with that kind of freedom.”
TROY DEENEY
With just one spot available, there was plenty of competition. Jordan Rhodes, who scored 83 goals in 159 games for Blackburn. Billy Sharp, the most prolific English goalscorer of the century. Glenn Murray and Grant Holt both had inspirational seasons.
But for the sheer scale of his contribution, it has to be big Troy. Convicted of affray, Deeney served a three-month prison sentence in 2012. He emerged repentant and focussed, almost single-handedly turning the Hornets from relegation fodder into promotion contenders.
Not only did he top 20 goals in three consecutive seasons, his fearsome hold-up play made both Matej Vydra and Odion Ighalo look twice the players they actually were. A towering presence.