Most influential player in Premier League history

[Croydon Royal]

Some interesting statistics in The Sun this morning (bear with me), where they asked Premier League managers a bunch of things such as who they think will win the Premiership, who's the best young player etc: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sp ... title.html

The one that caught my eye was the question on who the most influential player in Premier League history was. With 50% of the votes Ryan Giggs was the clear winner, beating Eric Cantona, Paul Scholes, Alan Shearer (all 13%) and Thierry Henry and Christiano Ronaldo (both 6%). There's obviously a variety of ways to define 'influential' in this case - quality of player, how they helped define what the Premier League stands for etc - and I'm not sure how the managers interpreted it. But I thought it was an interesting debate worthy of throwing open to the HNA? masses. For what it's worth I'd agree with Ryan Giggs (has won the most league titles, played in every season, played in some of the league's greatest games, spearheads the footballer shagging-around club) but would also throw in Peter Schmeichel, Frank Lampard and Scott Golbourne.

[Big Foot]

Influential is such a subjective term....influential on who/what exactly?

I.e. from a footballing perspective, Giggs is a comfortable choice. From a commercial perspective, you could argue Cantona as ISTR he was one of the first to negotiate an image rights agreement...

[Thomas L'Heureux]

Cantona was my first thought upon reading the thread title.

In Cantona's first season at Old Trafford, United won the inaugural Premier League by 10 points – winning the title for the first time since 1967. In doing so, he became the first player to win back-to-back English top division titles with different clubs (won the old First Division with Leeds). United were seriously shabby up until they signed him, and as they've dominated the Premier League by-and-large, you could argue he was particularly influential in the start of that dominance.

[TBM]

Bergkamp

[soggy biscuit]

Giggs due to being so good for so long. I would maybe have Schmeichel as runner up

[TheMaraudingDog]

Keane or Cantona.

[Bring Back The SB]

Cantona

[No Fixed Abode]

Zola.

[soggy biscuit]

Zola.

[Hoop Blah]

There's an argument for the likes of Zola, Bergkamp and perhaps moreso Klinnsmann as they were some of the first to really come over here (for the Premiership ££ of course) and help establish the Premier League as it is today.

Without the foreign imports the league wouldn't have grown into the beast it is today.

[Dare to Dr£am]

Influential is such a subjective term....influential on who/what exactly?

Men wanting to commit adultary.

[Fox Talbot]

Golbourne.

[3 veesinarow]

This topic is on a par with Messi setting Champions League "history" as the first player EVER to score 5 goals in the top-flight European competition...until it was pointed out that no less than TEN players had done it in the European Cup...Europe's top-flight competition.

Must keep reminding myself that football was only invented when Sky got hold of it.

[watfordroyal]

Of all the great players in PL history, would think Cantona prob most influential in that he was the catalyst to that Manu team,
as Fergie says "the missing piece of the jigsaw",
that made them into Champions, since then they haven't looked back
and raised the bar for everyone else to try and match, only Blackburn, Arsenal & Chelsea have.

[Jackson Corner]

Emerse Fae

[Mr Angry]

Another vote for Cantona from me, as his legacy was the Man Utd of today, who are THE most influential club in the Premier League by a country mile (without Man Utd, neither Chelsea nor Man City would have spent the £100's Millions they have done to try and match and surpass them); had Leeds not sold him, (let alone for the platry sum of £1M!!) its interesting to guess how things might have turned out differently....

After Cantona, there are a number of others who can all have legitimate claims of having been influential; but for their clubs rather than the PL as a whole - Adams, Henry & Bergkamp at Arsenal; Zola, Lampard & Terry at Chelsea, Beckham, Giggs, Scholes at Man Utd.

[TBM]

Pele

[postwhisperer]

C Ronaldo.. wish he was still there.. flair.. ive not watched the premier league very much since he left

[6ft Kerplunk]

Jean-Marc Bosman

[Bandini]

+1 for Schmeical