The best XI of the English top flight
The highest-rated player available at every position in the English top flight, drawn from 16,491 real career records across 154 squads. Nobody voted. The record book chose.
| Pos | Player | From | Record | Legend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GK | David Seaman | Arsenal 2000s | 405 apps | 94 |
| RB | Tony Adams | Arsenal 2000s | 504 apps · 32g | 94 |
| CB | Lee Dixon | Arsenal 2000s | 458 apps · 25g | 94 |
| CB | Nigel Winterburn | Arsenal 2000s | 440 apps · 8g | 94 |
| LB | Andy Robertson | Liverpool 2020s | 276 apps · 11g | 94 |
| RM | Raheem Sterling | Manchester City 2020s | 225 apps · 91g | 95 |
| CM | David Silva | Manchester City 2020s | 309 apps · 60g | 95 |
| CM | Robert Pires | Arsenal 2000s | 284 apps · 84g | 94 |
| LM | Theo Walcott | Arsenal 2000s | 270 apps · 65g | 94 |
| ST | Sergio Agüero | Manchester City 2020s | 275 apps · 184g | 95 |
| ST | Andy Cole | Manchester United 2000s | 195 apps · 93g | 94 |
Twenty clubs and 154 squads, the deepest single competition in the dataset. English record-keeping is unusually good going back a long way, which is why this league contributes more usable career records than any other.
The XI skews to the sides that kept a core together for years — the Arsenal back line of the late nineties and 2000s appears almost intact, because a full-back who plays 400 league games for one club is exactly what a career-record ranking is built to notice.
What the table is doing
This eleven draws on 4 different teams and spans the 1950s to the 2020s. Each player is ranked against others in the same position, decade and team type, so a goalkeeper’s appearance record and a striker’s goal record can sit in the same list without one drowning the other. The full derivation, including where it is least certain, is in the methodology.
Public records contain errors, so this list can too. Every name above links to its squad page, and every squad page links to the Wikidata record behind the figures — if something here is wrong, it can be checked in two clicks, and corrections are welcome.
Common questions
How is this the best xi of the english top flight chosen?
By record, not opinion. Every player in the English top flight is ranked on their real career output — appearances, goals, assists and honours — and the highest-rated available player fills each position in a 4-4-2. The pool here is 16,491 records across 154 squads.
Can I check these numbers?
Yes, and that is the point. Each player links to the squad page they came from, and every squad page links each name to the Wikidata record the figures were extracted from.
Can I play with this XI?
Not this exact eleven — the game deals you a random team and decade each turn and you draft from what you are given. That constraint is the game. These pages show what the strongest possible eleven would look like if you were never constrained at all.