Manchester United's Greatest 23-Man Squad Of The Premier League Era

By Alex Antliff / June 3, 2015

Now that the end of the season has come and gone, the English Premier League has turned twenty three years of age. It's been a long time since its inception in 1992, a year that a significant number of its fans are either too young to remember or too young to have experienced entirely. Since then, the landscape of English football has changed considerably.

Without a shadow of a doubt, Manchester United have been the definitive team of the Premier League era. Since winning the inaugural championship in 1993 under the tutelage of Sir Alex Ferguson, they have gone on to win the trophy a further twelve times. By contrast, Arsenal have three titles to their name, Chelsea have four, Manchester City have two and Blackburn Rovers are something of an odd one out, having dwindled considerably in status since winning their solitary title in 1995.

Given that in international footballing competitions, managers are tasked with picking a 23-man squad, it only seems right to look back over the past 23 years of Manchester United history to put together such a 23-man team from amongst the ranks of their illustrious alumni.

For players with careers incorporating the pre-Premier League era, only their contributions after the creation of the division have been taken into consideration. For example, legendary midfielder Bryan Robson, who appeared in just twenty nine games across the first two Premier League seasons after spending the prior eleven years at the club, has been omitted from the selection.

23. Peter Schmeichel (Denmark, 1991-1999)

An established shot-stopper is the foundation of any football team, and the Manchester United principle has always been to source long-term solutions to maintain defensive stability. As a result, there have only been only four men that have established themselves between the sticks over the course of the last twenty three years, with others functioning exclusively as backups or experiments that didn't last for more than a couple of seasons (or a couple of games in Massimo Taibi's case). Some of these, most notably Tim Howard, have enjoyed solid careers elsewhere, but take up little room in the annals of United history.

The 'Great Dane' was signed one year before the inaugural Premier League season for £505,000, later described as the 'bargain of the century' by Sir Alex Ferguson. His profile increased when his Danish national side won the 1992 European Championship despite not originally qualifying, only replacing Yugoslavia in the tournament after they were removed for political reasons.

For the next seven years, Schmeichel was a consistently dependable presence between the posts, keeping his side in key matches time after time with vital saves. After announcing that he would leave English football at the end of the 1998-99 season, it was a fitting that the club went on to win the Treble, with Schmeichel captaining the side in the Champions League final against Bayern Munich following the suspension of Roy Keane.