Premier League Draft – Picking our best all-time XIs and then arguing about it
The NFL draft begins in Green Bay on Thursday night — and across in London, The Athletic's UK football writers are having a draft of their own.
Four writers converged in the war room — that is, a podcast studio — to draft their all-time Premier League XIs.
The rules were simple — 60 seconds per pick, a snake order, and at least five players who appeared in the division before 2010. Individuals should be judged only on their performances in the Premier League, rather than the sum total of their careers.
This is how it unfolded — and you can listen to the podcast this weekend.
Jacob Whitehead: I entered the draft room armed only with a spreadsheet and a headful of dreams. But in the event, I focused on the decidedly more unromantic notion of relative scarcity — which positions had fewer top-tier players than others.
That meant my first pick of the entire draft — Mohamed Salah — was slightly surprising, but he and Cristiano Ronaldo were the only right-wingers I really wanted. The alternative options at left wing were far better, meaning I was comfortable letting Thierry Henry fall into Jack Lang's lap.
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Elsewhere, the midfield is nicely balanced, set up with a No 6, a No 8, and a No 10, not unlike Arne Slot's Liverpool side. Rodri will sit and cover, Frank Lampard is free to crash the box, and then add in David Silva's distribution. I also went for centre-backs early, taking my top two options in Virgil van Dijk and Vincent Kompany, alongside my first-choice goalkeeper, Petr Cech.
The strength in depth up front meant I was very happy when Wayne Rooney fell to me as the penultimate striker selected. I left full-backs until the end — for me, Kyle Walker and Ashley Cole were in their own tier, meaning it made sense to wait until my final selections once that pair were taken. Leighton Baines whipping in crosses towards Rooney and Lampard? That's the future my nine-year-old, Everton-supporting self dreamed of.
Jack Lang: Did I come into this process with an overarching strategy? Reader, I did not. The plan was to be reactive and roll with whichever punches came my way. In the event, I have to admit to being completely thrown by the third round of picks. I had already nabbed Thierry Henry and Kevin De Bruyne by that stage, and was looking at the central midfield options with a view to building a nice little 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1 formation.
There was only one problem: Alan Shearer was somehow still available. It would have been high treason to ignore him, so I didn't. That had two knock-on effects: I had to go 4-4-2 and my top three or four central midfielders were gone by the time I got to pick again. My engine room, therefore, does look a tiny bit lightweight. But those are the sacrifices you make for having a front four of Henry, Shearer, De Bruyne and Eden Hazard.
Alisson was my first-choice goalkeeper, so I was delighted that no one else picked him up before the final round. The defence looks very solid, too.
My team also has a quirk that I only noticed after the fact: I don't have a single left-footed player. Go forth, my orthodox kings!
Oliver Kay: If I had a vague plan, it was to focus on the spine of the team. But I was immediately thrown into a panic by Jacob making Salah his first pick and talking about the scarcity on the right wing compared to other positions, so I went for Cristiano Ronaldo for my first pick and was slightly surprised to find myself going for Steven Gerrard for my second.
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But, gradually, my team took shape. And rather than focus on the spine, I ended up deciding to leave goalkeeper and central defence for later because there were enough roughly equivalent candidates for those positions. It might have been a slight gamble but I picked up John Terry, Ricardo Carvalho, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Gareth Bale and Peter Schmeichel with my last five picks.
Am I happy with my line-up? I'm delighted. Look at that Chelsea-heavy back four, that formidable midfield, that world-class front three. So much quality, so much aggression, so many big personalities. Would Ronaldo leave Alexander-Arnold a little exposed on the right-hand side? No, because Gerrard would be rushing over to cover with a thunderous tackle. (I'm assuming thunderous tackles would still be allowed in this nostalgia-influenced exercise.)
If I were nitpicking, I might wonder whether, with Alexander-Arnold, Gerrard, Paul Scholes, Ronaldo, Bale and Harry Kane, this team might end up taking a few too many shots from distance. But let's be honest, a lot of them would fly into the top corner.
Duncan Alexander: Being able to pick any player in the Premier League's glorious 33-year history is kid-in-a-sweetshop stuff. Then again, there have been 4,963 players in the competition's history and no confectionery outlet would dare toy with that level of variety. This was an impossible, yet joyous task.
Where some got giddy at grabbing a Shearer or a Lampard, I wanted to try and construct something that got to the heart of what the Premier League represents — an intoxicating mix of northern European physicality and the sort of otherworldly flair that simply didn't exist in England before the 1990s.
To that end, I was delighted to pair Tony Adams and Nemanja Vidic in the heart of defence. Goals and grit? Yes please. Andy Robertson's monstrous assist total gets overlooked by many, not by me. Roy Keane and Yaya Toure also provide physicality and goals, while David Beckham and Dennis Bergkamp not only have the same initials, but also delivery systems that work in any era. As does Ederson 'four assists in 2024-25' Santana de Moraes from deep.
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Who are all these technicians aiming at? Oh, just Luis Suarez and Sergio Aguero paired together up front. A total of 253 goals in 285 Premier League games from any angle you can think of and a few others too.
And while we're here, Paulo Ferreira's Premier League record is 102 wins from 141 appearances, with 56 clean sheets and as many title wins as Arsenal. Look, you may not want to try and manage this side, but by god, you'd pay to watch them.
Lang: Jacob and Oli have similar teams: complementary skill sets in midfield, a striker who can drop off and create, one full-back more attacking than the other. Oli just about has the edge, courtesy of three-quarters of that amazingly frugal Chelsea defence and perhaps just a tiny little extra dose of X-factor further forward.
I have the utmost respect for Duncan — as a man, as a professional, as a lover — but his side is borderline disastrous. Aguero, Suarez and Bergkamp are all going to get in each other's way. Beckham is not in his best position. I thought he was joking when he picked Ferreira and it was the same for Ederson. I'm no doctor but I prescribe a good, long look in the mirror.
Alexander: Jacob's team feels nicely balanced. Initially, you fear there's no out-and-out goalscorer but then again, Rooney had a few bountiful seasons playing as a No 9 and Salah and Lampard have fired teams to league titles from the wing and central midfield. Baines was a sentimental choice but, as a man with 53 assists and 32 goals, he's a classic example of a great-yet-often-overlooked Premier League career.
Oli's team has the purest Premier League Years vibes, although you fear team spirit would collapse in game one over penalty-taking duties. Shame he missed the one other Chelsea defender worth selecting, though.
Jack, meanwhile, was extremely pleased to land Henry and Shearer but just look at that midfield behind them. Is that Hazard constantly getting in Henry's zone? And why is De Bruyne being deployed on the right flank as a poor man's Beckham when the real one was there all along?
Whitehead: Some nitpicking. I, too, almost fell off my spinning chair when Duncan chose Ferreira as his fifth pick and while his front three would be very watchable, it feels like an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary waiting to happen. Beckham is out of position, too.
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Jack's team keeps growing on me — it's defensively very sound, but Fabregas will have a lot of work to do in linking defence and attack. Hazard and Henry, though — what a day for wing play and silent H's.
Oli's XI, with its beautifully balanced midfield, is even stronger. My main question is whether his Chelsea defenders would have the pace to survive in the modern Premier League. And even among four squads filled with egos, his team could power a small nation for six months.
Kay: Apart from my own team, my favourite is Jacob's. I really like the balance of that midfield three (Rodri, Lampard, David Silva, three Manchester City legends) and if we're imagining peak Salah, peak Rooney and peak Ryan Giggs, that front three would work wonderfully. Giggs was past his electrifying best when 4-3-3 came into vogue in the mid-2000s, but in his younger days, he would have excelled in that role.
Jack has the strongest central-defensive partnership and the two best centre-forwards and I'm delighted he picked the unheralded Denis Irwin. But I wonder if his line-up might be just a little lopsided at the front end. Might it make more sense to switch to a 4-3-3, with De Bruyne in a midfield three, Henry drifting to the left wing and Hazard on the right? Hazard preferred the left, but I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you asked him nicely.
I love Duncan's front three and I love the idea of any midfield with Keane in it, but even when opting for a very Chelsea-heavy back four, I must admit Ferreira never crossed my mind — though I've hardly been able to stop thinking about him since.
Kay: A team that we didn't pick would stand comparison with those we have. Think about this XI: Edwin van der Sar; Gary Neville, Jaap Stam, Martin Keown, Stuart Pearce; Freddie Ljungberg, Fernandinho, Luka Modric, Robert Pires; Eric Cantona, Andy Cole. If we had five people around the table, we'd have a fifth extremely good team.
Lang: It makes it crystal clear how reductive the instant 'Would this guy make your Premier League all-time XI?' chat really is because the competition is fierce. Any of these teams could rationally be produced as an all-time XI, even before the player pool was split into four — well, maybe except for Duncan's. But when you look at these players written out, you have 30 to 40 players who could conceivably make the cut.
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Alexander: You could almost build a different team for a variety of different scenarios. A team you'd always fancy to get something away at Stoke City, or a team that would get fans off their seats with ridiculous long-range shooting, a little like Oli's already. But we're heading towards 40 years of the Premier League and there are so many layers of quality.
Whitehead: One thing it shows about English football is how it's built through the spines. I began talking about relative scarcity, but there are so many centre-backs, central midfielders, strikers, that it was never an issue. It was far more about who would get wingers first, or maybe even full-backs. In other leagues, that might not be the case.
Lang: In La Liga, it would be wingers, or dinky little attacking midfielders. Would Italy in a comparative era have more amazing defensive midfielders or centre-backs, perhaps?
Whitehead: It's interesting how many players we chose straddle 2010. I know we talk about the Premier League being strong now, but was that almost a golden age?
Kay: I would almost say it was an in-between era. Choosing 2010-11, for example, I remember it being a low-quality season. Manchester United won the league by nine points. Blackpool earned almost 40 points and were relegated, Scott Parker won player of the year at West Ham United while being relegated. It was post-World Cup, English football was at a real low, and you had this 'golden generation' of players coming towards the end.
Alexander: That era is being eulogised with the 'Barclaysman' thing, maybe not that season specifically, but people remembering obscure Wigan Athletic players. But every era has its great players, mid-tier players, and poor players. Depending on what age you are and what frame of mind you're in, you can pick a great team from any era.
Kay: I've insisted on picking lots of players from this era in my team — Gerrard, Scholes, Vieira, Henry — and we have it in our heads that this is the best there's been in the Premier League. And maybe they are, but that conversation is much more fluid when you look at Rodri, De Bruyne, Van Dijk, Alisson and Salah. They are modern greats, and will go down as greats whether people recognise it now or not.
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Whitehead: I was wondering how many more seasons players at the top now would need to get into this team. If Erling Haaland carries on at his current rate, when does he enter the conversation? There are quite a few others.
Alexander: It's a great question. Haaland's already got several Premier League records to his name and hasn't been mentioned once until now. But it's that impact you make, not just statistically, but in the Premier League ether. You think of Vieira and Keane and Gerrard and you can feel the sweat of a Super Sunday. And maybe that comes with time, and people will look back at the recent seasons of Man City vs Liverpool games with the same reverence.
Lang: Sorry to labour the point, but there's also a tonal difference. The players of that generation were ever so slightly unknowable to us, just because I think there was less direct contact between players and fans. It was more mediated, not as many games were on TV — you'd catch glimpses of them and in a way that buffeted their legends. Modern players are constantly on every screen that we look at.
Whitehead: Maybe this shouldn't be a surprise, but going through our teams, and just two or three of the 44 players we chose were not primarily known for their time at a 'Big Six' club — Shearer, Baines and, possibly, Kante. Of course it was always going to be 'Big Six' domination — but I'm surprised it's to that extent. Where are the cult-hero figures? Is it bad that this amount of talent coagulates at the top of the league?
Kay: We did an exercise in lockdown called Premier League 60, doing big profiles of the greatest players in the competition's history. And that was very big-club heavy, we had people asking: 'Why isn't Matt Le Tissier in there? Or Jay-Jay Okocha?'. But equally, you can look at these things as a Manchester United fan or a Manchester City fan and think: 'Hang on, we've won this many league titles and only had 10 representatives?'. In terms of our consciousness, this list has to include players who performed at an absolutely elite level for four, five, six seasons — and that's why you're looking at the big clubs.
Alexander: On Le Tissier, he's the sixth-top scorer of the 1990s with 98 goals and had the most assists with 62, ahead of Steve McManaman and Cantona. He was a one-club man, and we've all seen the highlight reels, but did he really affect league titles? Not really. And that's what gives you that longevity and legend.
Kay: We've not even got Didier Drogba, Andy Cole, Robert Pires, who would be higher than Le Tissier in my estimation — inevitably, the best ones end up at the same handful of clubs.
(Top image: Dan Goldfarb/The Athletic; Chris Brunskill/Fantasista, Ben Radford/Allsport,)
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