Sunday afternoon distraction - most famous XI

[Snowflake Royal]

Idle thoughts out for a walk on a Sunday afternoon, but what would you say would be our XI made up of the most famous players to play for us...

GK: Emi Martinez (Hislop, Wiggy, Cabral)
RB: Ulyses De la Cruz (Murty, Gunter)
LB: Ian Harte (Shorey, Bertrand, Rahman)
CB: Matty Upson (Primus, Duberry)
CB: Martin Keown (A Ferdinand, Ingimarsson)
CM: Steve Sidwell (Webb)
CM: Danny Drinkwater (Houghton)
AM: Royston Drenthe
ST: Les Ferdinand (Yakubu, Long, Dixon?)
RW: Glen Little (Kebe)
LW: Michael Olise (Salako, McAnuff edit: Siggurdsson)

Who have I forgotten, what have I got wrong?

[From Despair To Where?]

Kitson maybe deserves a mention being the Secret Footballer.

Ray Ranson?
Gylfi Sigurdsson
Robin Friday's had a few books written about him by non Reading people.
Eamonn Dunphy is pretty famous outside football.

Hal Robson Kanu for that goal against Belgium

[Snowflake Royal]

Kitson maybe deserves a mention being the Secret Footballer.

Ray Ranson?

Robin Friday's had a few books written about him by non Reading people.
Eamonn Dunphy is pretty famous outside football.

Kits was definitely in my long list, and probably the best in actual performance for us. Didn't think of the Secret Footballer aspect.

Didn’t consider Friday, because he's the greatest footballer you never heard of, and the others I think I'm too young for, or at least wasn't really aware of at the time, cheers. Somw googling to do.

Would say Death should get an honourable mention for how long his league record went unbeaten, but its not like anyone knew about it

Of course, Sigurdsson!

[From Despair To Where?]

Ray Houghton

Ian Porterfield

Jim Leighton

Steve Archibald

Laurie Sanchez

If you include friendly appearances, Daley Thompson, George Best.
Matt Busby played 30 times for us during the War.

John O'Shea

[morganb]

Andy Carroll would be classed as famous but before he played for Reading

Agree on Olise - he is world wide famous

[Sutekh]

Wayne Bridge
Ryan Bertrand
Andy Griffin

Jimmy Hill played amateur for the A team in the 50s

Peter Osgood was rejected after trialling in the 60s

Sam Bartram came for a trial before went to Charlton in the 30s, he wanted to play in goal but the club refused to play him there

Do those who passed through the Academy at some point in their careers count?

[Clyde1998]

Using Wikipedia page views by day (goes back to 1st July 2015 and I'm only counting since the page has been created to account for younger players), I've come up with this starting XI and manager:

1. GK - Emiliano Martinez (2,150 per day)
2. RB - John O'Shea (669)
3. LB - Wayne Bridge (1,113)
4. CB - Anton Ferdinand (490)
5. CB - Martin Keown (563)
6. CM - Danny Drinkwater (1,301)
7. CM - Gylfi Sigurdsson (1,459)
8. WM - Michael Olise (1,938)
9. WM - Michail Antonio (1,212)
10. ST - Andy Carroll (1,640)
11. ST - Les Ferdinand (664)
12. Manager - Brendan Rodgers (1,768)

Players with 400+ views per day (or just under 1.6m total over the entire period):

1. Cesare Casadei (927)
2. Phil Parkinson (676)
3. Hal Robson-Kanu (615)
4. Alen Halilovic (579)
5. Charlie Adam (573)
6. Ryan Bertrand (560)
7. Shane Long (556)
8. Tom Ince (530)
9. Matt Miazga (520)
10. Charlie Savage (492)
11. Yakubu (474)
12. Baba Rahman (464)

Managers with 400+ views per day:

1. Paul Ince (1,051)
2. Jaap Stam (958)
3. Alan Pardew (652)
4. Ruben Selles (633)
5. Steve Clarke (487)

The figures skew heavily towards active footballers, especially those who've played for a big club, or those who've kept themselves in the public sphere since leaving football. This is more a bit of 'fun'.

I'm only looking at the English language Wikipedia too, so foreign players may be under-represented in their global levels. Pavel Pogrebnyak would be in the 400+ category, if I included his Russian language views. From what I can work out right now, I'd have to do this manually for every player to get accurate numbers though.

Players like Seol Ki-Hyeon were massive in South Korea, but the relative lack of Wikipedia usage in the country means his popularity probably isn't well reflected in the Korean language figures either.

[MR. CYNICAL]

Can't be a arsed to scroll through, any one mentioned Kerry Dixon and Mark Mcghee?
And Trevor Morley.

[AthleticoSpizz]

Sir Matt Busby
Frank Swift

[leon]

Ray Houghton

Ian Porterfield

Jim Leighton

Steve Archibald

Laurie Sanchez

If you include friendly appearances, Daley Thompson, George Best.
Matt Busby played 30 times for us during the War.

John O'Shea

Ray Houghton was a fcuking disgrace when he played for us. Absolutely shit. However he did look like Ron Dixon from Brookside. So not all bad.

[From Despair To Where?]

Ray Houghton

Ian Porterfield

Jim Leighton

Steve Archibald

Laurie Sanchez

If you include friendly appearances, Daley Thompson, George Best.
Matt Busby played 30 times for us during the War.

John O'Shea

Ray Houghton was a fcuking disgrace when he played for us. Absolutely shit. However he did look like Ron Dixon from Brookside. So not all bad.

He was shite for us but he won 2 league titles and scored that goal against Italy at USA94 (as well as that goal against England in Euro88).

[Carnabyswhiskers]

Depends on how we are defining 'fame'. EG Darren Caskey - well enough known name as he made a few first-team appearance at Spurs before joining us. I would chuck in also Dariusz Wdowczyk. Are we including people who were on the books but did not make a first-team appearance for us? If so, Brendan Rodgers and maybe, very tenuously, Eberechi Eze. Loanees: didn't we have Nathan Aké at one stage?
Outstanding contribution to infamy : Terry Hurlock. Finally, players whose immense fame belonged to somebody else : Puscas, Pelé.

[MR. CYNICAL]

Ray Houghton

Ian Porterfield

Jim Leighton

Steve Archibald

Laurie Sanchez

If you include friendly appearances, Daley Thompson, George Best.
Matt Busby played 30 times for us during the War.

John O'Shea

Ray Houghton was a fcuking disgrace when he played for us. Absolutely shit. However he did look like Ron Dixon from Brookside. So not all bad.

Agree he wasn't great, can't remember how old he was, think his legs had gone. Think the whole team underperformed that season under Bullivant.

[Clyde1998]

didn't we have Nathan Aké at one stage?

Good shout. Add in Nathaniel Chalobah too to a lesser extent.

[Snowflake Royal]

I think they have to have turned out at least once in a competitive fixture for the first team to qualify

[Snowflake Royal]

Ray Houghton

Ian Porterfield

Jim Leighton

Steve Archibald

Laurie Sanchez

If you include friendly appearances, Daley Thompson, George Best.
Matt Busby played 30 times for us during the War.

John O'Shea

Ray Houghton was a fcuking disgrace when he played for us. Absolutely shit. However he did look like Ron Dixon from Brookside. So not all bad.

Agree he wasn't great, can't remember how old he was, think his legs had gone. Think the whole team underperformed that season under Bullivant.

His legs were completely shot and he spent all his time taking 2 unnecessary touches for everyone he needed and passing backwards and sideways.

[Esteban]

Phil Parkinson must be pretty famous Stateside now. Obviously due to his managerial success at Wrexham, not his playing career.

[grey_squirrel]

Neil Webb

[South Coast Royal]

I think that dedicated football fans (as opposed to just followers of England and the top level) would know the names of Trevor Senior and Michael Gilkes as well as Steve Death particularly because of his name, much in the way that oldies knew of Arthur Longbottom.

[Sutekh]

Bert Eggo

Robin Friday

Chris Woods

Paul Barron