Eddie Gray has drawn comparisons between Leeds United defender Liam Cooper and current Aston Villa ace John Terry.
Cooper, 26, has enjoyed a superb start to the Championship season and formed a brilliant partnership alongside Pontus Jansson at centre-back.
He has been handed the captaincy by manager Thomas Christiansen and is thriving during his fourth season at Elland Road.
Gray has compared the defender to Premier League legend, who won the English top flight fives times during his time with Chelsea.
The 36-year-old is currently playing for Villa as he reaches the latter stages of his career and has always been recognised for his brilliant leadership qualities, something that Gray sees in Cooper.
“What he does is he leads by example,” Gray told LUTV. “He is very enthusiastic, you get players like that that pick other people up.
“You look at the likes of John Terry when he was at Chelsea. He is a leader, and I think he has that in his make-up, Liam Cooper, to be a leader.”
Cooper had to settle for a fringe role at Leeds last season and was stuck behind the reliable pair of Jansson and Kyle Bartley.
However, the expiry of Bartley’s loan has seen Cooper come into the starting XI and make an imperious start to the campaign.
The Whites have conceded just two goals in their opening five league games and their back-line looks even stronger than last season.
OPINION
Cooper is still relatively new to his role as captain and he feels far too premature to start drawing comparisons with Terry, who is arguably the greatest club captain of the Premier League era. Cooper has made a brilliant start to the season and his first objective should be making sure he stays in the starting XI, with the standards he has set so far being the benchmark. The centre-back does have a big presence at the big and appears like he could influence his team-mates. However, you could certainly say the same for his team-mate Jansson and many want the Swede to be the club captain. It will be interesting to see how Cooper develops and he is still just 26-year-old, meaning he has a long long way to go if he is to have the same sort of impact that Terry had at Chelsea.