Four Liverpool Players in Times Top 20

Liverpool weren't the most impressive side in the Premier League this season as a collective, though on an individual basis there's an argument to be made that a handful of their squad members were, at different points throughout the season, among the country's more impressive footballers.

Wire to wire there's no question that Luis Suarez deserves to be in the conversation for the league's best, even if he ended up missing the final four matches through quarantine because of his impulsive and idiotic bite on Branislav Ivanovic. Steven Gerrard started very poorly but has been better over the second half, sprinkling in a few very influential performances as per usual; Glen Johnson was very, very good in the fall but has been almost unwatchable over the past few months, and one of his defensive cohorts, Daniel Agger, has enjoyed a fitness almost completely void of injury and been mostly serviceable in central defense.

There's other names to pick out, of course, as Philippe Coutinho has been nothing short of an aphrodisiac since joining Liverpool in January, Daniel Sturridge has scored plenty of goals, Jordan Henderson had an excellent stretch during the winter and more recently, and on and on. Some very good, some very bad, and most, as the league table indicates, too inconsistent to stake a claim as being among the league's elite.

Only The Times sees things a bit differently, with each of Suarez, Gerrard, Agger, and Johnson finding themselves ranked among the top twenty overall. Suarez tops the list, which seems fair enough, with Gerrard in the top five, Agger in the top ten, and Johnson just inside the cutoff. Among the more confusing omissions--of which there are many--is Juan Mata, joining the rest of his Chelsea teammates in not quite being up to par. Oh.

I like Liverpool very much, but let's be serious--over the course of the entire season, Luis Suarez is likely one of the only Liverpool players who's in the top ten, and maybe one or two others in the top twenty. To place three in the top ten and four in the top twenty verges on the absurd, which, if we're thinking about the point of power ranking anything, seems about right--unless it's hair, of course.