10 of the very best Premier League ‘Barclaysmen’

Social media has exploded with the Barclaysman trend this week, popularised by the the Cultras Football Podcast.

A quick scroll through football-related channels and you’ll no doubt have seen compilation tributes to Premier League names from years gone by. It’s been so popular that official club channels have got involved, with highlights of fan favourites, cult heroes and forgotten faces from the ‘Barclays era’.

The name derives from the long-running partnership between Barclays bank and the Premier League. Between 2001 and 2016, Barclays was the title sponsor of England’s top flight and the ‘Barclaysmen’ are players who defined that era.

Barclaysmen are not the finest footballers of that period, but players who invoke a nostalgic fondness. It might be a bizarre haircut, unique celebration, or reputation for scoring absolute bangers that earns them qualification.

Above all, it’s an indelible impression on the masses that makes football fans randomly exclaim in conversation ‘Remember him!?’.

10 of the very best Premier League ‘Barclaysmen’

Niko Kranjcar

If Crouch and Defoe were the frontmen of the band Harry Redknapp so often sought to get back together, Niko Kranjcar was the effortlessly cool lead guitarist. Swaggering somewhat in the background, he occasionally burst into life with an epic solo.

The creative Croatian added a touch of class to a Portsmouth team bursting at the seams with Barclaysmen, before some ‘triffic Tottenham performances after following Redknapp to North London.

Player.

Laurent Robert

Not the first or last lovely left foot to enter this list of brilliant Barclaysmen.

Laurent Robert’s catalogue of stunning strikes is so good that they borrowed footage from the Frenchman to film a Hollywood movie. Santiago Muñez might have been make believe as the title character of the Goal! franchise, but Robert’s rockets were the real deal.

Even if some of his strikes were frankly unbelievable.

Golazo Merchants: Laurent Robert, Newcastle’s frustrating genius

Yakubu

The broad-shouldered bagsman made his name at Portsmouth, featured in a European final with Middlesbrough, became Everton’s record signing, and banged in goals for Blackburn. It doesn’t get much more Barclays than that.

Yakubu was a nightmare for the Premier League defenders he often steamrolled through, boasting a goal rate comparable to a certain Didier Drogba.

The fact that Andy Gray almost exclusively referred to Yakubu as ‘The Yak’ only adds to his status.

Jay Jay Okocha

So good they named him twice, Jay Jay Okocha pitched up at the unlikeliest surroundings of Bolton Wanderers in the early noughties.

Sam Allardyce must be one smooth talker behind closed doors, having somehow persuaded a host of world names to Bolton.

Why spend the twilight of your career in the sunshine of the United States or Australia when you can play under the grey skies of Greater Manchester, right?

Okocha was the funnest addition of the lot, a footballer who revelled in making opposition players look foolish (just ask Ray Parlour).

Tugay

Tugay was so good he barely had to run. The Turkish midfielder arrived in English football at the age of 31 but spent eight seasons conducting proceedings at Blackburn Rovers.

The chain-smoking, screamer-scoring playmaker distributed delightfully, boasting a technique to make those at Ewood Park gasp and applaud. Just imagine how good he could have been, had he been a little more dedicated to the game…

“He would smell of tobacco in the dressing room beforehand. Then he would run the show for 45 minutes. Then he would be smoking again at half-time,” former Blackburn teammate Matt Jensen recalled.

“I remember [manager] Graeme Souness looking around a dressing-room at half-time and saying, ‘Where’s Tugay?’ We all looked over to the toilets and there were rings of smoke coming out of the top of the cubicle.”

Mark Viduka

An under-appreciated forward from an era when proper number nines ruled the land.

Part bulldozer, part ballerina, Viduka was the twinkle-toed target man of a Leeds United team who dared to dream, before fading from the consciousness to run a coffee shop in Zagreb.

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Steven Pienaar

Steven Pienaar’s best football came across two spells with Everton where the winger formed part of a Toffees team on the verge of breaking into the top four.

Hard-working and technical, his £2m arrival was a snip for the Blues at a time when David Moyes was the best bargain hunter in the league. Was there a cooler left-sided partnership than Pienaar and Leighton Baines?

Michu

We’re can’t always remember for sure where Michu came from, or where he went afterwards, but we know for one season (and one season only) he was simply unstoppable at Swansea.

Perhaps the one-season wonder of the Premier League era, Michu bagged 22 goals and won the League Cup during his debut season in South Wales, having arrived from La Liga for a pittance.

A club icon and Premier League cult hero, there’s a sense of mythology when it comes to Michu.

Rory Delap

‘Can they do it on a cold, rainy night in Stoke?’

It’s become a phrase cemented into the football lexicon, used to describe the ultimate English football acid test. Treacherous trips to Stoke City took no prisoners in the Barclays era, as Tony Pulis’s side bullied and battled their way to Premier League points.

The trump card for the Potters was Rory Delap, whose ludicrous long throws incited panic in penalty boxes. Stoke was the land of the giants inside the box and Delap’s deliveries, hurled in which Herculean strength, were their chief weapon.

“I remember looking over at you (Stoke) in the tunnel and it was like Jurassic Park mate,” Joe Cole joked to ex-Chelsea teammate and former Stoke player Robert Huth.

“You were huge! Kenwyne Jones couldn’t even fit through the door because his shoulders were so wide. You were the hardest… and this is a compliment, a horrible side to play against.”

Morten Gamst Pedersen

Plucked from obscurity and owner of a highlight reel that never gets boring, Morten Gamst Pederson is perhaps the Barclaysman trend personified.

The Scandinavian winger with the boyband highlighted hair pitched up at Blackburn Rovers and cemented fan favourite status across almost a decade at Ewood Park. With a sweet left foot that could thwack a ball goal-wards from any distance or angle, Pedersen fits the brief.

Read – Six Premier League players who shone during the international break

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