Jamie Carragher: John Terry was a great player

The Liverpool legend also feels that the Blues' legend never received much credit for his abilities on the ball.

Former Liverpool defender Jamie Carragher has come out praising former Chelsea centre-back John Terry in a recent interaction with Sky Sports. He affirmed that the Blues' skipper never received the adequate credit for his performances back in his playing days.

“Basically, John Terry was a better version of me, bigger, more powerful and had better quality on the ball than me. He was also a great passer of the ball. I think John Terry was one who, when you trained with him, went up a level in your own mind about how good a player he was. You knew he was a great player,” Jamie Carragher quipped.

Regardless of Terry's playing acumen being supposedly unacknowledged, he boasts of a laudable trophy cabinet that he acquired at Chelsea. With the Blues, Terry won five Premier League titles, four FA Cups and a UEFA Champions League medal in 2012.

Jamie Carragher heaped further praise on John Terry, who is currently an assistant coach at Aston Villa. He remarked, “Technically, with the ball, he was a lot better than anyone ever gave him credit for. There was always this talk about John Terry being this man who would put his head and his body in front of anything, and he would, and we would talk about Rio Ferdinand being the player who was great on the ball.

“Whereas, we forget that Rio was a great defender and we forget that John Terry was great on the ball. John Terry could pass the ball 60 or 70 yards on his left-foot. The best ball-playing centre-back you could ever think of would probably struggle to do that.”

The 39-year-old was named the UEFA Club Defender of the Year in 2005, 2008 and 2009. He is regarded as one of the most well-renowned loyalists of Chelsea, having made 492 appearances for the club over a course of almost two decades. Following his departure from the Blues, Terry represented Aston Villa in the Championship for a single season before going on to join the management team as the assistant coach of the club.

The 2019-20 season has been far from productive for Aston Villa. The Villans are separated from Watford by merely two points. The Hornets are placed in the 17th position and hence are out of the relegation zone. Irrespective of that, the current COVID-19 pandemic across the world means that the Premier League football is suspended until the end of the April and there is no clarity about what the fate holds for the teams who are presently placed in the bottom three spots in the standings.