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The Best Premier League Defenders (2026-27)

Ratings as of 12 September 2026 · updated with every squad change

All 169 defenders across the 20 Premier League squads, ranked by overall rating. The top 30 are below.

Perfect Eleven is a free browser game: a wheel spins to a random Premier League club and you pick one player from it, building a starting XI from all 20 squads. Chemistry rewards a side that fits together — so the best players don't always make the best team.

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How the ranking works

Full-backs and centre-backs share one list and one scale, ordered by overall rating. The ratings are editorial judgements of each player for 2026-27 rather than a tally of tackles or clean sheets, so compare players within the role as well as by the number. How our ratings are made.

The list

#PlayerPosClubOVR
1Virgil van DijkDEFLiverpool93
2William SalibaDEFArsenal92
3Rúben DiasDEFMan City92
4Gabriel MagalhãesDEFArsenal91
5Joško GvardiolDEFMan City90
6Jurriën TimberDEFArsenal88
7Piero HincapiéDEFArsenal87
8Lisandro MartínezDEFMan United86
9Riccardo CalafioriDEFArsenal85
10Abdukodir KhusanovDEFMan City85
11Marc GuéhiDEFMan City85
12Matthijs de LigtDEFMan United85
13Pau TorresDEFAston Villa84
14Rayan Aït-NouriDEFMan City84
15Matheus NunesDEFMan City84
16Diogo DalotDEFMan United84
17Jan Paul van HeckeDEFTottenham84
18Ezri KonsaDEFArsenal83
19Reece JamesDEFChelsea83
20Jarrad BranthwaiteDEFEverton83
21Leny YoroDEFMan United83
22Noussair MazraouiDEFMan United83
23Nikola MilenkovićDEFNottm Forest83
24Micky van de VenDEFTottenham83
25Ben WhiteDEFArsenal82
26Victor LindelöfDEFAston Villa82
27Levi ColwillDEFChelsea82
28Antonee RobinsonDEFFulham82
29Jeremie FrimpongDEFLiverpool82
30Sven BotmanDEFNewcastle82

The tiers

Virgil van Dijk at 93 leads a top five separated by three points, which makes defence the tightest elite group in the league. Behind him come William Saliba (92), Rúben Dias (92), Gabriel Magalhães (91) and Joško Gvardiol (90).

Arsenal place seven defenders in this top thirty and Manchester City six more. That is 43% of the league’s best defenders belonging to two clubs, in a pool of 169 rated defenders across twenty squads.

Because full-backs and centre-backs share one scale, compare within the club as well as by the number. Sven Botman at 82 is Newcastle’s highest-rated defender; Ben White at the same rating is only Arsenal’s seventh. The rating is honest about quality and silent about context.

What this means for your draft

A back four takes four of your picks, so defence is where the wheel tests your patience most. Take the best available early rather than holding out for a top-five name — the drop from 93 to 82 across thirty players is gentler than at any other position, so the cost of settling is genuinely low.

Chemistry comes from nationality, not club, so defenders who share a country can be worth more together than their ratings alone suggest. The draft strategy guide shows how the links add up.

Common questions

Who is the highest rated defender? Virgil van Dijk at 93.

Are full-backs and centre-backs rated separately? No — one scale covers both, so a full-back and a centre-back on the same number are rated as equally good overall.

How many defenders are rated? All 169 across the 20 squads.

How these ratings work

Every player carries one overall rating, editorial rather than fed from a stats API: set player by player and reviewed by hand as squads change. The same numbers drive the draft, the power rankings and how your XI is graded.

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