Chelsea: John Terry, Ron Harris, Peter Bonetti top London’s best one-club men

As football fans, there are few things that please us more than a player that becomes a part of the fabric of our clubs. To see someone we have watched develop and grow on the football field is extremely satisfying. In fact, as Chelsea fans, it’s probably the thing we crave more than anything.

London clubs as a whole have a multitude of one-club men. However, no individual club has more than the rest. We class a one-club-player as one who has featured for their team in at least 10 seasons and is regarded as a club legend, even if he has the odd unfaithful (from the faithful’s perspective) moment.

Some of these names may be unfamiliar to the FIFA generation, but they’d be fighting their contemporaries for a place in the starting XI of any of their respective teams. In deference to the London Football Awards’ celebration of all that is good about the London football scene – not least of which is how they come together to raise funds for the Willow Foundation’s mission of creating special days for seriously ill adults – we’ll go through the Capital’s finest in alphabetical order.

1. Tony Adams, Arsenal: 19 seasons, 669 appearances

Tony Adams is the definition of a one-club man. Google “Mr. Arsenal,” and topping the list is Adams’ Wikipedia biography. A genuine one-club man, Adams spent his entire 22-season football career with the Gunners. Here’s a man who would run through a brick wall for the club. Not only that, but like all good captains, he’d drag the rest of the team, kicking and screaming, with him.

Adams is the only player to captain a league winning side in three different decades. Well-documented off-field issues led Adams to form the Sporting Chance Clinic, a charitable organisation set up to help sportsmen and women struggling with addictions.

2. Peter Bonetti, Chelsea: 20 seasons, 731 appearances

You know you’re a player when you earn a nickname that becomes synonymous with the position. Peter “The Cat” Bonetti had two spells at Chelsea, split by a short stint in the US. But let’s face it – American soccer doesn’t really count for anything, at least it didn’t back in 1975.

Famed for sporting a stylish plain green jersey, Bonetti gained his nickname for acrobatically flying through the air to keep the ball out of the net. At an international level, he would have achieved so much more had there not been a plethora of world-class keepers like Gordon Banks, Peter Shilton and Ray Clemence competing for the position.

For the majority of his 20 seasons he was Chelsea’s number one choice between the sticks. Following his retirement, he initially moved to one of the Scottish Isles, becoming a postman before returning to coach with both Chelsea and England. Always a fit man, he was still playing in charity games well into this century.

3. Jim Cannon, Crystal Palace: 16 seasons, 660 appearances

Like Adams, Jim Cannon was most notably a centre-back and went onto captain his side for many years. Born in Glasgow, Cannon came through Crystal Palace’s youth system in the early 1970s.

He was highly regarded by Palace fans as a defender, but was renowned for scoring some vital goals during his career. That goalscoring began with a goal on his debut against Chelsea in March 1973. In a game that was all blood and thunder, Cannon found himself with an early booking, having scythed down Peter Osgood before heading in the second goal of the game early in the second half. During his long career, he’d go onto to score 30 league goals.