The Carragher Premier League Challenge

28/04/20 1802

With a severe lack of football currently being played, those involved in the game have been using the time to come up with various challenges. Jamie Carragher is a good example and using his Twitter feed he has come up with a couple of different challenges regarding team selection.

The most recent is to pick a team with one player from any club to have played in the English Premier League, with only one player from any nation.

Using the hash tag #carrachallenge, Jamie was the first to select his team which was:

Southall

Nilsson, McGrath, Kompany, Fuchs

Essien, Modric, Gerrard

Juninho

Ronaldo, Henry.

As you can see, there are plenty of different clubs and nationalities included but only one from each club and nationality. That's the difficulty when it comes to choosing this team, there is always going to be some players who miss out. Not because you do not want to have them in your team but because the rules have made it difficult to include them all.

So, what is the key to picking this team and including the best players? For a start, everyone is going to be biased towards their favourite player and it is that player who is going to be the first name on the team sheet. In that respect, for me it would be Ryan Giggs. So, Giggs goes into the left wing position of my team, which is great and I am happy.

However, by selecting Giggs it now means I cannot choose another Welsh player, which in truth is not a huge loss. The main issue is that I have already selected my player from Manchester United, who are the most successful team in the Premier League era. That immediately rules out players including Peter Schmeichel, Roy Keane and Cristiano Ronaldo to name but a few. Nonetheless, I am going to stick with the decision.

Working our way from goalkeeper through to the forwards, I am going to choose Thibaut Courtois in goal. In his first season he helped Chelsea win the League Cup and the Premier League title. He also won the Premier League Golden Glove as Chelsea again won the league in 2016 and no one can doubt his quality during his spell at Stamford Bridge.

Moving to the defence and I am going to play with a back four. At right back I am going with Ricardo Pereira of Leicester City. There may be better choices but needs must and the Portuguese is a fantastic athlete who was named Leicester City Player of the Season and Players' Player of the Season in 2018/19. At left back, we have Ian Harte. He played over 200 games for Leeds United and in addition to being a solid defender, he scored plenty of goals from free-kicks and long range. Everyone loves a left back who has a sweet left foot.

Into central defence and we have a partnership of Sami Hyypia and Colin Hendry. Hyypia helped Liverpool win the FA Cup and League Cup twice, the Champions League and Europa League plus was named in the PFA Team of the Year twice. Hendry was part of the Blackburn squad that won the Premier League in 1995 and was a great defender in his prime.

Joining Giggs in midfield we have Nolberto Solano on the right. The Peruvian was a tremendous crosser of the ball, with accomplished dead-ball skills to match. Moving to the centre of midfield and we come to the English representative which is Matt Le Tissier. He was the first midfielder to score 100 goals in the Premier League and earned the nickname "Le God" among Southampton fans. As an attacking midfielder with huge amounts of skill and flair, Le Tissier is a player who could get fans off their seat with ease. Joining Le Tissier we have Luka Modric. The Croatian International was superb during his time in the Premier League for Tottenham Hotspur before earning a move to Real Madrid. Modric is one of the best central midfielders of the past decade, anywhere in the world.

That leaves us with two spots in attack. The first of which goes to current Manchester City striker Sergio Aguero. Without doubt one of the best centre-forwards in Premier League history, Aguero has won the Premier League four times, the Premier League Golden Boot and twice been named in the PFA Team of the Year. At the time of writing, he has the best goals to games ratio in the history of the Premier League.

Partnering Aguero up-front we have Thierry Henry. No other player has ever hit more than 20 goals in five consecutive Premier League campaigns and Henry did it with elegance. The Frenchman won the PFA’s Player of the Year award in 2003 and 2004, and the Football Writers’ award in 2003, 2004 and 2006. Henry was also the key to the invincibles team of 2003/04, scoring 30 goals in 37 appearances.

So, here is the final team:

Courtois

Pereira, Hendry, Hyypia, Harte

Solano, Modric, Le Tissier, Giggs

Aguero, Henry.

What do you think? What is your team?