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#3 Ledley King
It’s impossible to talk about Ledley King without wondering how good the central defender could’ve been had it not been for the chronic knee issues that curtailed his time at the top of the game and forced him into early retirement at the age of just 32.
Ridiculously, for a number of seasons, King played for Spurs while barely training due to his knee problems – and was still one of the Premier League’s most consistent defenders.
King joined Tottenham at the age of 15 and worked through their youth system before debuting in the first team as an 18-year-old in May 1999, and interestingly during his early seasons at the club he was often deployed as a midfielder.
He scored what was the Premier League’s fastest goal at the time – after just 10 seconds – in a game against Bradford in 2000, a record that wasn’t broken until 2019.
It was as a central defender however that King became most widely renowned; even with his chronic knee issues, he was still Spurs’ most important defensive player throughout the 2000s, and despite not being able to train properly, was still prized by bosses Martin Jol, Juande Ramos and Harry Redknapp – and captained Tottenham to their most recent major trophy in 2008 when they won the EFL Cup.
King was so highly regarded that then-England boss Fabio Capello even took him to the 2010 World Cup despite knowing that he’d likely only be able to participate in one or two games at the most.
When he retired, the great Thierry Henry marked him out as the best defender he’d ever played against – and incredibly, he ended his career having only been booked 8 times, despite playing 14 seasons in the Premier League for Spurs.
