Wayne Rooney? Robert Pires? Eric Cantona? Cesc Fabregas? There’s only room for eleven Premier League era stars in our team.
Patrick Vieira – Arsenal in action Ryan Giggs – Manchester United
Sharing 16 Premier League titles and some of the greatest, most influential players in the English game, it’s no surprise the rivalry between Manchester United and Arsenal has been hyped up to blockbuster proportions in the last 20 years.
From the ‘Pizzagate’ scandal to Roy Keane and Patrick Vieira scrapping for supremacy for the best part of a decade, this often season-defining clash has produced more pyrotechnics than a Michael Bay sequel. And, with Jose Mourinho on the Old Trafford touchline these days, Arsene Wenger can forget any warm welcomes he might have received from Sir Alex in years gone by.
And, in preparation for Saturday’s crunch clash, we combine these geographically-irrelevant rivals to create a truly formidable force; a United and Arsenal Premier League crossover.
Peter Schmeichel
A five time Premier League champion, it’s a testament to the Great Dane’s impact at Old Trafford that each and every goalkeeper to step foot between the sticks at Old Trafford between his departure in 1999 and Edwin Van Der Sar’s arrival in 2005 appeared to wilt under his raging, red nosed spectre.
Schmeichel’s strong-armed reflex stop to deny Newcastle United’s John Barnes in a crucial 1997 clash remains perhaps the greatest feats of goalkeeping ever witnessed in the Premier League.
Gary Neville
With his pre-pubescent face fuzz and badge-kissing bravado, Neville became a rather easy scapegoat for opposition fans, particular those situated a few miles down the M62. At United, however, he remains an inspiring example that hard work and maximum determination can compensate for a lack of natural talent.
Neville’s surging overlaps and telepathic understanding with David Beckham remains one of the defining images of United’s late 90s invincibility.
Tony Adams
If the era of one-club men appears increasingly archaic in an age of ‘modern mercenaries’, the idea of a player rising through the ranks from a schoolboy to the seniors before captaining the side for 14 years feels like a storyline ripped directly out of a Roy of the Rovers spin-off. And that’s exactly why Tony Adams will forever remain a legend in North London and beyond.
The Romford rock came out on top against some of English footballs greatest strikers, and alcoholism to boot, and is now immortalised in statue-form outside the Emirates.
Nemanja Vidic
While the floundering post-Ferguson regime has been characterised by a self-indulgent desire to sign players based wholly on reputation and their capacity to sell replica shirts in faraway lands, United’s emphatic resurgence in the mid-to-late noughties was underpinned by an ominous backline, marshalled by a little known Serb from Spartak Moscow.
Vidic, an iron-headed centre-back, won five top flight titles in just nine years in England and proved the perfect partner for the ball-playing Rio Ferdinand.
Denis Irwin
While Patrice Evra and Ashley Cole have come to define the revolutionary role of the modern-day full-back, Irwin remains criminally underrated by those beyond the red half of Manchester. A wonderfully technical player, the most successful Irishman in football history (a record he shares with Roy Keane) nailed down United’s left flank for the best part of a decade despite feeling more comfortable on his right.
Oh, and that’s without mentioning his penchant for the odd stunning free-kick.
Patrick Vieira
Tall and rangy yet skilful and immensely powerful, Vieira had everything, including the perfect balance of brain and brawn. One of the early stars in Arsene Wenger’s brave new reign at Highbury, the presence of a young Frenchman in the heart of a previously Anglophile Arsenal drew plenty of suspicion but Vieira silenced the doubters immediately and emphatically.
Twenty years on, it’s testament to his eternal influence that an entire generation of ‘new Vieiras’ have failed to replicate the timeless original.
Paul Scholes
There’s a scientific theory that, if aliens ever descended onto our fair planet, they would be so far removed from our understanding that we wouldn’t even be able to comprehend their existence. You could say the same about England managers and technically gifted playmakers. Akin to Glenn Hoddle, perhaps even Matt Le Tissier, Scholes was criminally undervalued within the national set-up, shunted out to the left, his guile marginalised to make room for extra grit.
Thankfully Sir Alex knew what a talent he had on his hands. In fact, only Ryan Giggs, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard netted more Premier League goals from midfield than Scholes’ 107.
Cristiano Ronaldo
When David Beckham’s picturebook Manchester United marriage ended in a rather sticky divorce in 2003, the Old Trafford faithful would have been forgiven for fearing for the future of their famous number seven jersey. They needn’t have worried. His thirty-minute Premier League bow against Bolton, described by the shirt’s most legendary incumbent, George Best, as the most exciting debut he had ever witnessed, proved a sign of the brilliance to come.
13 years on, Ronaldo is undoubtedly the greatest goalscorer in the modern game, a blonde-tipped one-trick pony evolving into the man for all occasions.
Ryan Giggs
Who else? We could mention his 632 Premier League appearances, his 109 goals, his 13 titles or his 116 assists. But the numbers don’t tell the whole story, merely leaving a blurb painting the briefest of pictures. For there was no substitute for watching Giggs in action, at full-flow, driving and dribbling past opponents like a souped-up Sonic.
Mentally and physically, the Welsh wizard played the game at a completely different pace.
Thierry Henry
If only he was good in the air. Didier Drogba enjoyed a brief spell as the Premier League’s most fearsome hitman, a mantle also held on occasions by Luis Suarez, Fernando Torres and Robin Van Persie, but nobody this side of the millennium comes close to Thierry Henry. Despite his lightning speed, or ‘va va voom’ if you will, everything came so naturally to the fleet-footed Frenchman.
Lifting four Golden Boot awards between 2001 and 2006, Henry had ice running through his veins.
Ruud Van Nistelrooy
In contrast to Henry, both a scorer and a creator in equal measure, Van Nistelrooy was the archetypal poacher, a master of putting the ball in the back of the net from whatever angle, whatever height, whatever body part, as long as he was confined to within 18 yards of the opposition goal.
Van Nistelrooy scored 68 goals in his first three seasons in Premier League football, while his remarkable record of 128 minutes per strike is only bettered by Henry, Sergio Aguero and who else but Adam Le Fondre.
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