OPINION<\/span><\/label><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\nAs someone who operated in a similar role, Dubliner Dunne, who made his debut for the Blues as a 17-year-old before going on to make 431 Premier League appearances throughout his career, told the ECHO: \u201cI think it\u2019s time to move Jake into his favoured role in central defence. He\u2019s done well at full-back and he\u2019s been game, never letting Everton down.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think the very best out of him, long term he\u2019s going to be a centre-half. It doesn\u2019t have to be perfect straight away, he\u2019s learned to play in the Premier League and he has shown he is at the level internationally where he has been fantastic.<\/p>\n
\u201cPush him in and it\u2019s another six months of him learning his role as a centre-back in the Premier League. I think he\u2019s more than capable of being a top performer in the Premier League and he\u2019s shown that.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow is probably the right time to get him in there. They don\u2019t seem to be able to keep Jarrad Branthwaite fit, so having Jake in there, he\u2019s quick, good on the turn and can make recovery runs.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a player with a lot of potential. Now it\u2019s time to let him go, putting him in his main position.\u201d<\/p>\n
James Tarkowski and Michael Keane were Moyes\u2019 most used centre-back pairing last season but given that both of them are now 33, Dunne reckons that the combination of O\u2019Brien, 25, and Branthwaite, 24, could be the way forward.<\/p>\n
Speaking courtesy of Harry Kane World Cup 2026 goals, he said: \u201cIf they could get Jarrad to stay healthy then it\u2019s a potentially formidable partnership. It would be some size as well and physically very good.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there has been a lot of hope for Branthwaite, he\u2019s a fantastic footballer and it\u2019s probably just the injuries that have kept him out of being at the World Cup with England. That\u2019s the sort of level that he can get to.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you play the two of them together, you\u2019re looking at a centre-half partnership that could be going for the next 10 years. The two of them are of a young enough age and physically dominating with decent speed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would be lovely for David Moyes if he could turn around and say: \u2018This is the future and we\u2019re going to go with it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Everton player Richard Dunne has been speaking about the big change he would like…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}