Everton hero Tony Cottee says the club's past players deserve as much respect as the current generation.

Cottee told evertonfc.com: "There probably is, but it does annoy me when people say players are more skilful nowadays. That's not true. You could argue that the players are fitter, but to say that there are technically better than us is a bit unfair to the players that played 20 years ago.

"Peter Beardsley would hold his own in any current Liverpool team and Graeme Sharp would hold his own in any Everton team. Let's not forget that we didn't play on the same quality pitches that they have nowadays. We didn't play on bowling greens. We used to play on terrible pitches but still master the football.

"In fact me and Tim (Cahill) played together for a few months when we were both at Millwall. I didn't really get to know him but I could see he was going to become an outstanding player."