7 players who we can’t believe are Premier League title winners
We’ve been poring over the records of Premier League winners to pick out some ballers we completely forgot won the thing. Honestly, we still aren’t fully convinced some of these fellas actually did it.
When you consider that some of the best footballers this country has ever seen never won the Premier League like Steven Gerrard, Gareth Bale, Harry Kane, Luis Suarez, Les Ferdinand and David Ginola, it makes it all the more jarring that some of these guys managed to get a winners medal.
To kick us off, let’s have a wonderkid that wasn’t.
Jack Rodwell
By the skin of his teeth. When Rodwell was at his peak, following his initial breakthrough at Everton, he made his big move to Manchester City.
In his second season there, City won the title and Rodwell played five league matches — the minimum appearances needed to earn a Premier League winner’s medal.
We associate Rodwell with lower Prem teams, the Championship, and unrealised potential, so it’s odd to think of the Englishman with a League winner’s medal. He’s playing for Syndey FC in the Australian A-League now.
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Gerard Pique
The Barcelona legend made nine appearances for Manchester United in the 2007-08 season, when The Red Devils won their tenth Premier League title.
Our brain is fundamentally rejecting this fact. We know it happened, but our body is rejecting it like an incompatible donor organ. He’s so Barca.
Luis Boa Morte
The man is Fulham through and through as far as we’re concerned.
Cut him open and he bleeds mainly white with black sleeves. The Portuguese is even Fulham’s First Team Coach, for now, until he goes off to manage Guinea-Bissau at the end of the season.
But, once upon a time, Boa Morte made 15 appearances in a title-winning season for Arsenal. It was Arsene Wenger’s first season in English football.
Nope. Not having it. Refuse to believe it.
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Neco Williams
Wales and Nottingham Forest’s flying wingback started out at Liverpool before going on loan to Fulham and then making the permanent switch to Forest. Turns out he made six appearances for Liverpool in their title-winning season under Jurgen Klopp.
Williams doesn’t look likely to add to that medal at Forest, but we’d have said that about Leicester in 2014, and we’d have looked stupid, so who bloody knows, eh?
Loic Remy
It’s an odd thing — we associate Remy with Newcastle in our mind, yet he only spent one season on Tyneside, and that was a loan.
The Frenchman spent two full seasons at Chelsea, during which time he won the Premier League, and it’s just sort of dissipated from the knowledge chambers of our mind.
He scored the Ligue 1 goal of the season in 2018-19, Remy, and it is pretty impressive, to be fair. Free kick dinked over the wall, and Remy just spins and hits it on the volley. Pure smacks it. Good goal.
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Matthew Upson
Matthew? Matt? Matty? Whatever — the fact Upson won the league with Arsenal (and would have two winners medals if the minimum games played to a earn a medal was five back in 1999, as it is now) is mind-blowing to us.
Remi Garde
If you remember ex-Villa manager Remi Garde winning the 1998 Premier League with Arsenal as a player, then you are:
- Doing very well to be tech-savvy enough to be reading this article at your age.
- Probably quite good at pub quizzes — are you free on Thursday evenings?
But there you go. Ten appearances for The Gunners under Arsene Wenger in 1997-98, meaning he just qualified for a nice shiny medal at the end of the season. Good for him.