Is Cole Palmer the Premier League’s best? Telegraph Sport experts have their say

Cole Palmer broke a Premier League record at the weekend when he became the first player to score four goals in the first half of a match.

His manager, Enzo Maresca, led the plaudits afterwards by claiming he is the best player in the division but does the 22-year-old deserve such a lofty status?

Telegraph Sport’s football experts have their say on who is the standout player in English football and you can do the same below...

Some will have short-term memories because he has been injured but Kevin De Bruyne has been running games for years.

His range of passing is exceptional and he sets the pace of the game for Manchester City. I would put him in any team whenever possible.

Cole Palmer is untouchable right now. He has the most goals and assists since the start of last season and his four-goal performance against Brighton just highlighted how good he is.

Maresca said after the Brighton game that Palmer is the best player in the Premier League and he was spot on. Lee Carsley will surely be plotting how he can now build his England team around the former Manchester City man.

The most important player to the best team in the Premier League is Rodri, the Manchester City midfielder. Rodri was also the player of the tournament at Euro 2024, doing more than anyone to guide Spain to victory.

He is not as spectacular as the likes of Haaland and Palmer but he is the most intelligent and effective player in English football. Now ruled out of action for months, City will need to restructure their team without him.

He failed to score for the first time on Saturday, so recency bias means the superstar who grabbed four is superior... for a week. When Manchester City win the title, Erling Haaland will have at least 40 goals.

If he is not considered the Premier League’s best player, he may actually become the most underrated.

A left-field shout but Lewis Cook is consistently outstanding. It all goes back to the theory about whether he would receive more recognition if he was playing for a perceived bigger club. Bournemouth fans will not care either way

Football is defined, shaped and decided by goals and there is not anyone better at putting the ball in the back of the net than Erling Haaland.

His numbers are ridiculous at Manchester City – 100 goals in just 106 appearances – and the Norway international is as close to unstoppable as we have seen in the Premier League. These are the sorts of statistics that only the likes of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo have put up in the past.

A player who can be on the periphery of a game but still win it is priceless and on his current trajectory, the 24-year-old will smash the all-time goalscoring record set by Alan Shearer, which has stood since 2006.

When William Saliba came into Arsenal’s team in August 2022, they were transformed from a side expected to challenge for fourth into credible title chasers. When William Saliba came out of Arsenal’s team in March 2023 with a back injury, that title challenge collapsed and their defensive metrics cratered. Since William Saliba came back into Arsenal’s team in August 2023, they have accumulated 103 points in 44 Premier League games: practically an 89-point pace across a league season.

Arsenal are now bookmakers’ favourites to win the title largely on the strength of their defence, so surely one of their defenders deserves a second look when it comes to the question of the league’s best player? Saliba’s partner Gabriel is not far behind, not least because of his goalscoring prowess, but Saliba has greater responsibility in possession and is trusted as Arsenal’s last man. He looks a Real Madrid player in waiting; a source of pride and worry for Arsenal supporters.

Furthermore, Saliba has done all this between the age of 21 and 23, when centre-halves are typically making their mistakes further down football’s chain. Virgil van Dijk was 26 when he signed for Liverpool. Rio Ferdinand turned 24 early in his first season at Manchester United. John Terry was 24 when Jose Mourinho arrived at Chelsea. Tony Adams can one-up Saliba, having lifted the league as captain aged 22 in 1989, but it took him longer to silence the donkey noises that followed his Euro ‘88 torment.

This combination of Saliba’s age, his influence on his team and the gravity of his position, makes him my pick.

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