Two Newcastle United stars ranked in 50 best Premier League players so far this season

With nine rounds of PL matches played, who have been the stand outs?

This comes from ESPN and their journalist Ryan O’Hanlon compiling his updated list.

Here below are the top 50 ranked Premier League players on the ESPN man’s list and first his explanation of how he has arrived at his updated choices…

‘Premier League Top 50: Ranking the best players of 2025-26 so far

A quick reminder of what these rankings are

The rankings are a combination of who I think the best players are (i.e. the ones who would contribute the most to winning if they were to play every minute of every game) and the players who are providing the most value (i.e. the players who are actually playing minutes and helping their teams win). This way we don’t have a list comprising only players from a couple of clubs.

In making this latest edition, I tried to find a balance between where I thought things were at the start of the season and what we’ve seen over the first nine weeks. I have a hard time believing that Liverpool’s players, for example, have suddenly all become ineffective scrubs, so you’re going to see a lot of players who haven’t played well yet this season still on the list. Except, they’re almost all significantly lower than they were at the start of the season. The opposite, then, is true of Arsenal: don’t want to overreact too much to their great start, but almost everyone is getting a bump up.

That’s generally my thinking: make adjustments based on the first nine games but also don’t completely overhaul your opinion of a player based on the first nine games.

As always, this is biased toward players who do things that are quantifiable — there is a lot that happens on the field that we still can’t count, but I’m more likely to be wrong by chasing after them too aggressively — but it’s also not a purely data-based list.’

50. Reece James, full back, Chelsea
49. Tyler Adams, midfielder, Bournemouth
48. Matheus Cunha, forward, Manchester United
47. Marcos Senesi, center back, Bournemouth
46. Sandro Tonali, midfielder, Newcastle
45. Morgan Rogers, attacking midfielder, Aston Villa
44. Michael Kayode, fullback, Brentford
43. Daniel Muñoz, full back, Crystal Palace
42. Iliman Ndiaye, winger, Everton
41. Estêvão, winger, Chelsea
40. Micky van de Ven, center back, Tottenham
39. Yankuba Minteh, winger, Brighton
38. Jack Grealish, winger, Everton
37. Eberechi Eze, attacking midfielder, Arsenal
36. Jordan Pickford, goalkeeper, Everton
35. David Raya, goalkeeper, Arsenal
34. Alexis Mac Allister, midfielder, Liverpool
33. Guglielmo Vicario, goalkeeper, Tottenham
32. Rúben Dias, center back, Manchester City
31. Adam Wharton, midfielder, Crystal Palace
30. Jérémy Doku, winger, Manchester City
29. Cody Gakpo, forward, Liverpool
28. Ismaïla Sarr, forward, Crystal Palace
27. Dango Ouattara, forward, Brentford
26. Jan Paul van Hecke, center back, Brighton
25. Jean-Philippe Mateta, forward, Crystal Palace
24. Bryan Mbeumo, forward, Manchester United
23. Marc Guéhi, center back, Crystal Palace
22. Jurriën Timber, full back, Arsenal
21. Elliot Anderson, midfielder, Nottingham Forest
20. Enzo Fernández, midfielder, Chelsea
19. Ibrahima Konaté, center back, Liverpool
18. Florian Wirtz, attacking midfielder, Liverpool
17. Martín Zubimendi, midfielder, Arsenal
16. Antoine Semenyo, winger, Bournemouth
15. Ryan Gravenberch, midfielder, Liverpool
14. Rodri, midfielder, Manchester City
13. Alexander Isak, forward, Liverpool
12. Mohamed Salah, winger, Liverpool
11. Josko Gvardiol, center back, Manchester City
10. Bruno Fernandes, midfielder, Manchester United
9. Virgil van Dijk, center back, Liverpool
8. Dominik Szoboszlai, midfielder, Liverpool
7. Bruno Guimaraes, midfielder, Newcastle
6. Moisés Caicedo, midfielder, Chelsea
5. William Saliba, center back, Arsenal
4. Bukayo Saka, forward, Arsenal
3. Declan Rice, midfielder, Arsenal
2. Gabriel Magalhães, center back, Arsenal
1. Erling Haaland, forward, Manchester City

The ESPN journalist did a write up on some of the players, including the United captain (though not Sandro Tonali)…

‘7. Bruno Guimaraes, midfielder, Newcastle
You can think of the opposition defensive lines this way: The attacking line is the easiest to bypass, but it also carries with it the highest penalty for failure. The defensive line is the hardest to break through, but it also comes with the smallest penalty for failure. The midfield line, meanwhile, is the worst of both worlds: harder to break through than the attacking line, and a much higher downside than a failed pass through the defensive line.

Per Gradient’s data, only nine players have completed at least 25 passes that broke the opposition midfield line, and only one of them has completed at least 80% of his attempts at breaking the midfield line. That would be Bruno Guimarães, who also leads the league in both passes attempted (20) and passes completed (9) that break the opposition defensive line.

He’s just a brilliant player who understands the risks and payoffs of the different areas of the field as well as anyone in the league.’

Any kind of list like this is always going to have some dubious choices. After all, it is just one person’s selections and even though they/he would claim not, it will have his own inbuilt bias.

Liverpool still have seven players in the top 19 Premier League players above and that includes for example, Konate. The scousers have been really poor at the back and as well as the goals conceded in other competitions, only two Premier League clubs outside the relegation zone have conceded more than the 14 PL goals that Liverpool have conceded. I don’t think Konate is great to start with and certainly I wouldn’t be swapping the likes of Thiaw and Botman for him!

I kind of get the reasoning for the ESPN journalist still having Isak and Wirtz high up, based on what they have done before. There again, Wirtz had never played a single Premier League match before this season and hasn’t exactly looked up to his price tag having now done so (played in the PL).

I think it is obviously laughable that Tonali isn’t far higher up this list but then this is across the media, overlooking his true brilliance.

However, what most definitively doesn’t make any sense is one Newcastle United omission. The ESPN journalist says that the list is largely data driven and yet Nick Woltemade after joining NUFC late in the window, has since started six Premier League games and scored in four of them and played so outstandingly overall. Yet he doesn’t make the 50 top performing Premier League players so far this season???