Top 10 Premier League playmakers ranked: De Bruyne, Scholes, Zola… | OneFootball

Bruno Fernandes has been on fire this season – but where does he rank among the Premier League‘s finest playmakers?

Tricky one, this. How do we define and judge a playmaker? We could play the numbers game and produce a list of the players with the most assists, but that won’t do.

And what the most mercurial talents bring, you can’t always measure with stats.

So this is a completely subjective list of the finest playmakers to grace the Premier League. Playmakers. Not wingers, not strikers. The players in the pockets, the wee men – you don’t have to be small, but it’s definitely part of the vibe – whose first five yards are in their head.

10) Juan Mata

We start with the toughest choice of all: Mata or Christian Eriksen?

Can’t we have them both? Apparently not, because we remain slaves to the repressive tenths. Can’t have a top 11, can we? No, right.

Mata is in on little more than vibes. If we had to pick a more consistent playmaker, it would be the Spurs’ version of Eriksen, the direct one who’ll kill you with a pass or a dribble before he himself came back from the dead to play again in the Premier League.

But playmakers are men of moments and Mata was more of an artist. And he’s left-footed – lefties just look more graceful.

In the two seasons Chelsea won the Champions League and Europa League, the Spaniard was the club’s two-time Player of the Year before Jose Mourinho rocked back up at Stamford Bridge.

Mata never quite hit those heights with Manchester United, but his eight years at Old Trafford are littered with magic. Juan-field, anyone?

9) Mesut Ozil

Ozil’s legacy is an odd one. He spent eight years at Arsenal – we felt it necessary to triple check that – during the second half of which he struggled to meet the standards he set for himself through the first three of four seasons.

Which is understandable because there was a time he was absolutely brilliant. In 2015-16, Ozil was unplayable, creating more chances than anyone has before or since in a season that Opta kept records on.

Sure, his influence waned, especially after Arsenal allowed his agent to write his own terms in 2018.

There were still flashes, though, and the ‘Ozil finish’, chopped into the ground to bounce over whatever the obstacle may be, will forever be remembered as such.

8) Luka Modric

Modric makes the 10 despite his finest work being done in Real Madrid’s white, not Tottenham’s.

But his four seasons at White Hart Lane have to have been special to lay the foundation for a frankly ridiculous career at the Bernabeu.

The Croatian was thought too slight for the Premier League when he arrived in 2008 and it wasn’t until Harry Redknapp showed up that he started to ease into the playmaker role at Spurs.

Between them, and with a little help from Gareth Bale, Redknapp and Modric were the driving forces in getting Spurs into the Champions League.

A stage Modric graced, prompting his manager to say: “He is unbelievable. Magnificent. He’s an amazing footballer, the little man takes the ball in the tightest areas with people around him, wriggling out of situations. He could play in any team in the world.”

Which hadn’t escaped Real Madrid’s attention. Or Chelsea’s, and many a player would be dead to Spurs fans for flirting with the Blues, but Modric was given a pass by most.

7) Matt Le Tissier

It’s always a shame when player of such grace and elegance turns out to be a bit of an egg.

And standing at six-feet-plus, he’s could be disqualified for, among other things, being too tall. But we’ll park all that for now and focus only on Le Tiss’s supreme talent.

Daniel Storey, in his excellent Portrait of an Icon series for our friends at F365, wrote of Le God: ‘He is one of the five most technically gifted English players of the last 40 years, alongside Glenn Hoddle, Chris Waddle, John Barnes and Paul Gascoigne.

‘The average quality of a Le Tissier goal is the greatest in the Premier League era, Eric Cantona is his only genuine rival for the honour.’

Care to dispute any of that? It would have been fascinating to see what Le Tissier could have achieved away from Southampton.

We’re happy to dodge the risk of disappointment, though, his one-club-man status adding to his aura.

Le Tissier did not strive for ‘bigger and better’ than Saints, and from contentment came creativity few can match.

6) Gianfranco Zola

Zola may be a controversial inclusion. As a second striker, why does he make the cut, but no Bergkamp or Cantona? It’s a good question, to which we have no answer better than ‘because’ and ‘vibes’.

Playmakers are slight fellas, not six-foot-plus man mountains, their vision and brain more than covering for a lack of stature. And Zola fits that vague criteria, and so much more.

As a 23-year-old, Zola won his only title while serving as Diego Maradona’s understudy at Napoli. Which explains a lot.

He was 30 when he signed for Chelsea – probably wouldn’t happen now – but there was still magic in the old Mizunos.

Aside from the regular acts of wizardry and sending Jamie Carragher for an Evening Standard at least once, Zola is best remembered as that rarest of species: a Chelsea player universally cherished throughout the Premier League.

5) David Silva

When El Mago arrived at Manchester City in 2010, he was already among the finest technicians in Europe, his signing confirmed while he was in South Africa winning the World Cup with Spain. But was the Premier League really for him?

The season before he joined Roberto Mancini’s City, those in the top 20 for assists bore little resemblance to Silva’s style or size.

With Cesc Fabregas perhaps the only exception, the 19 others were powerful midfielders, flying wide men or robust strikers.

The answer to whether Silva would be able to find the pockets in which he thrives was a resounding ‘yes’.

Mancini nailed it after the first two years of 10 for Silva at City: “If he had gone to Barca, everyone would say he’s one of the best players in the world – and he is one of the best players in the world.”

A decade of consistent creativity littered with moments of genius earned Silva a statue at the Etihad. Even that has a better touch than your average Premier League midfielder.

4) Bruno Fernandes

The only current inclusion and we’ll fight anyone who disputes his worthiness for this 10…

For much of his six years, Fernandes has been the only redeemable feature of Manchester United – how bad would things have got without him? – and his creative output has always been consistently excellent.

Now, not long after United tried to get rid, he’s closing in on the Premier League assists record.

‘Oh, but he waves his arms around a lot’. Grow up.

3) Cesc Fabregas

Third on the all-time Premier League assists list with 111, yet Fabregas still feels somewhat underrated.

Perhaps it’s due in part to the Spaniard, unlike most of this list, not being synonymous with a particular club.

He was revered at Arsenal, even when he left to go home to Barcelona, but booed when he returned to the Emirates with Chelsea.

Maybe it’s because he doesn’t fit one particular mould. At Arsenal, he was an all-action hero, doing anything and everything. Later, at Chelsea, he reined in the instinct to do it all, instead sitting deeper to pull strings from there.

Regardless, Fabregas is undisputedly one of the finest midfielders to grace the Premier League, even if no one wants to truly claim him as their own.

2) Paul Scholes

My toughest opponent? Scholes of Manchester. He is the complete midfielder. Scholes is undoubtedly the greatest midfielder of his generation” – Zinedine Zidane.

“Paul Scholes is a role model. For me – and I really mean this – he’s the best central midfielder I’ve seen in the last 15, 20 years” – Xavi Hernandez.

There are reams and reams of quotes from the game’s greats, people who really know a player when they see one, extolling Scholes. To the point we could slip one in from Jesus Christ himself, and you wouldn’t be sure it wasn’t genuine.

Are you really going to argue with any of them? There’s only one player with a reasonable claim to place higher here…

1) Kevin De Bruyne

De Bruyne and Silva’s decades at City overlapped by five years. Which, looking back, seems even more unfair on the rest of the league than those 115 charges.

KDB drove City on to win 14 major trophies in his 10 years, the proper ones, plus a few other pots.

As well as being one of the continent’s most creative geniuses, he was also a driving force in midfield, suffering no fools and setting standards while City won the lot.

Pep summed him up: “Come on, there’s no doubt he’s one of the greatest for sure. For his consistency, except the last year due to injury problems.

“The consistency in important games and not important games, every three days being there all the time. There’s no doubt.”

Only Ryan Giggs has more Premier League assists because he played more than double the number of games. And to think some people scoffed when City signed him.