Terry has to take care as he chooses his new team BY MARTIN KEOWN

AS a defender you are only as good as the people in front of you. Call them your barricade. I recall Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit were the best I played with. Your job as a defender facing the play is to communicate with good information, to encourage and demand. Pull people around, keep them on sentry duty and keep them protecting you and, therefore, the goal. John Terry needs to look at the interest from West Brom, Crystal Palace, Bournemouth, Stoke and others and choose the move that is right for him. In other words, who is going to help him the most? He doesn’t want to be embarrassed. If he goes to a team where he is being pulled right and left, that is no good for him. At his age being exposed is the last thing he wants. I’ve written about Terry before and I’m not his biggest fan, but I do rate him highly as a defender. And I could see why a lot of Premier League clubs would want to sign him. He can play in a back three, but only in the centre so he is not dragged around all over the place. In fact, I would argue that he could still play that role for Chelsea now and could be more effective than David Luiz playing there. At Chelsea, with N’Golo Kante and Nemanja Matic as the ‘barricade’ he could still do that job. But his pride has been hurt, he is down the pecking order and he wants to play more regularly. My advice would be to play as long as you can. Ignore the voices who talk about retirement and keep going. Ryan Giggs did that, he adapted and changed as a player. Obviously, he was a winger who became a midfielder while Terry is in a position where you can be taken apart by pace. That’s what happened to him too often at international level. A dozen clubs will want him. I hear he is a good trainer, who works hard on his fitness and listens to sports science advice. On the pitch, he is a presence in both boxes, will get his share of goals and makes the right choices when defending his goal. A good fit would be a move to Stoke. They could cash in on Ryan Shawcross and Terry would be working with a modern-thinking management team who will offer him protection, choose his matches and make sure he is not exposed. He would be a very astute signing for them.