We continue our quest to put together the very best Premier League XI of all-time this week by pooling together a key cog in any team – the centre back pairing.

We’re sticking with the classic 4-4-2 for our dream XI and have already pulled together our shortlist of goalkeepers and full backs, but who are the potential stars to sit in the heart of our ultimate defence?

There are plenty to choose from and even the bookmakers would have their favourites, so here are our top five we’ll be selecting from come the start of the season…

Tony Adams

Tony Adams was a true great of the game. Despite battling demons off the pitch he seamlessly slipped into two styles of play at Arsenal, the old school George Graham defensive philosophy and the modern, attacking football of Arsene Wenger.

Both highly praised the centre back during his career and there are few players that wouldn’t say he was the best defender they ever played with.

Rio Ferdinand

While Rio could read the game like few others and was as defensively sound as they come, it was his ball-playing abilities that completely revolutionised defending in the division.

He made defending look easy and at points during his career was comfortably the best centre half in the world. He won countless trophies at Old Trafford and during his 504 appearances in the top flight, 189 of those were clean sheets.

John Terry

Chelsea’s John Terry also comfortably enters the shortlist as one of the very best and was the heart and soul of the Blues team that won so much during the Roman Abramovich era. Wayne Rooney once described him as the “toughest player” he came up against, while at Chelsea he was able to aid in an astonishing 214 clean sheets in just 492 games.

Captain. Leader. Legend. That’s what they call him at Stamford Bridge, and it’s not hard to see why.

Sol Campbell

Sol Campbell was another truly solid centre back that many tried to get past, but few actually succeeded. His move from Spurs to Arsenal was certainly a controversial one, but he went from strength to strength, taking over Adams as the main man in the back four and going on to be a part of that legendary Invincibles team.

Virgil Van Dijk

Steve Bruce, Vincent Kompany, Nemanja Vidic, Jaap Stam, Marcel Desailly – they could all have comfortably sat in a top five shortlist of greatest Premier League centre backs, but we’re going with Virgil Van Dijk.

The argument of course is he’s not done it over a lengthy period of time in the division. But do you expect him not to do it over a lengthy period of time in the Premier League? Let’s face it, we’ve got many years to come of Van Dijk greatness in the Liverpool defence and he’ll undoubtedly be one of the best ever by the end of his career. So why not include him now? His performances warrant it, don’t they?