Legend: Time to stop playing Aston Villa's Reo-Coker at right back
Mar 28 2009 by Mathew Kendrick, Birmingham Mail
Nigel Reo-Coker and Mark Noble in action.
“At his age now he’s never going to be a right-back,” said Morley.
“You hear all these things about so-and-so could turn into a different player, but I think once you get to a certain age you can’t completely change positions.
“Of course I’ve got sympathy for Nigel Reo-Coker, he’s a good pro and obviously it would have hurt him personally. “It’s not his position, but he never seems to complain.
“I’ve never once read in the paper him saying I don’t want to play there.
“He gets on with his job which is very important.
“It just happened that Reo-Coker got caught out a few times at Liverpool and that was picked on by the highlights on the television.
“I’ve been there myself, you make a mistake and all of a sudden there’s 20 million people slagging you off, but you don’t mean to do that.”
Morley fears that playing full-back is a dying art because defenders these days are not allowed to tackle and traditional wingers are a rarity.
“In the modern day game there’s no really specialist defenders at right-back,” he added.
“Why try and defend now when you know if you make one tackle you’re going to get booked?
“Years ago when you were playing against a right-back, he was a right-back.
“Now they move people about. They’re more or less attacking midfield players because they don’t need to defend as much because less teams play with proper wingers.”
