THE Echo is launching a vote to find Southend United’s best players from the past decade.

With 2019 coming to an end, Echosport will be holding polls to find the fans’ favourites in every area of the pitch, along with a manager.

And chief sports reporter Chris Phillips is looking forward to finding out the results.

“Things aren’t great at the moment for Blues and everyone is a bit down in the dumps about it all but there have been some great moments in the past decade,” said Phillips.

“Beating Wycombe at Wembley in the League Two play-off final was probably the best one but we’ve had some great players in this decade so it will be interesting to see who gets voted in.

“Some positions, like goalkeeper for instance, seem quite straight forward as I would be extremely surprised if Daniel Bentley doesn’t get chosen.

“But other areas of the team will be a lot closer and it will be interesting to see who gets picked as manager too.”

Polls will be run on the Echo’s website and on social media position by position for fans to pick their favourites.

And Phillips would like to see as many supporters as possible having their say.

“I started talking about this on one of the neverending journeys home from an away game and thought it would be good to open it up for everyone so it would be great for as many people as possible to vote,” said Phillips, who has been watching the Shrimpers for the past 30 years.

“We don’t really have much to make us smile right now and it’s tough when everything is so negative so at least this might mean getting Twitter notifications which aren’t quite as miserable as normal.”

The Southend United team of the decade will line-up in a 4-4-2 formation with each position being decided by a vote.

But players will have to have played at least 50 games to be considered.

“We want it to be players who have made a big impact over a longer period of time rather than just someone coming in on loan for a few games,” said Phillips.

“I think 50 games is about fair and the first poll will be held later this week to choose the goalkeeper but that’s probably the easiest one to decide!”