What was Wayne Rooney thinking? Here are the best three players in the Premier League this season…
Rooney's picks have come in for debate
According to Wayne Rooney, the top three players in the Premier League this season are Antoine Semenyo, Bryan Mbeumo and Viktor Gyokeres.
His choices have come in for heavy scrutiny, and with some justification with the omission of Erling Haaland particularly baffling.
Semenyo has had a strong start to the campaign, scoring six goals in 11 Premier League games, and providing the offensive spark for a Bournemouth team that sit ninth in the table.
The Ghana international has two fewer goals than Brentford’s Igor Thiago, who also has a significantly better minutes per goal ratio.
Mbeumo has been a pivotal figure for a Manchester United side seemingly finding their groove under Ruben Amorim. He has five goals and stepped up while United wait for Benjamin Sesko to settle into life at Old Trafford.
Gyokeres is the most baffling choice. The Sweden centre-forward has four goals in 10 league games but has struggled to prove he is the answer to the Gunners’ search for an outright number nine that will carry them to the title.
Granted, Arsenal are top of the table but that has been largely due to a stingy defence and a raft of creative midfielders.
So, who should have been in the top three?
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Erling Haaland
Who knows what Rooney was thinking when he left out the free-scoring Norwegian. Haaland has an incredible 32 goals in 20 games for club and country in 2025/26, a record that has propelled Norway to the World Cup and helped Manchester City surge into second in the Premier League.
He also seems to have embraced a new level of responsibility at the Etihad and there is no doubt he is the main threat to Arsenal’s title challenge.
Gabriel
The rock at the heart of the Arsenal defence, the Brazil international is also a threat at the other end with his height and physicality making him a pivotal figure in the Gunners’ productive set-piece routines. Arsenal recorded eight successive clean sheets prior to the 2-2 draw at Sunderland that preceded the international break. His partnership with William Saliba will be key in the months ahead as Mikel Arteta aims to land the club’s first Premier League crown in 23 years.
Granit Xhaka
We could easily have gone with Declan Rice or Moises Caicedo here but Xhaka’s influence on Sunderland gives him the edge. The Switzerland international has been the stand-out player for a team that scraped into the Premier League via the play-offs. True, not many of the team that won at Wembley make up the starting XI now but that also indicates how well Xhaka – the on-field voice of coach Regis Le Bris – has helped mould a raft of new players into a unit that goes into this weekend in fourth place in the Premier League. Xhaka became a better player at Bayer Leverkusen under Xabi Alonso and he is showing it now on a weekly basis.