Home › Players › The Best Premier League Midfielders (2026-27)
All 177 midfielders 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.
▶ Build your XI freeOne scale covers every midfield profile from destroyer to playmaker: the rating reflects total influence — ball progression, chance creation and defensive share together — not goals alone. That is deliberate, and it is why a holding midfielder can out-rate a No.10 with better highlights.
| # | Player | Pos | Club | OVR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bruno Fernandes | MID | Man United | 95 |
| 2 | Florian Wirtz | MID | Liverpool | 94 |
| 3 | Declan Rice | MID | Arsenal | 93 |
| 4 | Rodri | MID | Man City | 93 |
| 5 | Martin Ødegaard | MID | Arsenal | 92 |
| 6 | Cole Palmer | MID | Chelsea | 90 |
| 7 | Martín Zubimendi | MID | Arsenal | 88 |
| 8 | Tijjani Reijnders | MID | Man City | 88 |
| 9 | Phil Foden | MID | Man City | 88 |
| 10 | Sandro Tonali | MID | Tottenham | 88 |
| 11 | Mikel Merino | MID | Arsenal | 87 |
| 12 | Eberechi Eze | MID | Arsenal | 87 |
| 13 | Ryan Gravenberch | MID | Liverpool | 87 |
| 14 | Alexis Mac Allister | MID | Liverpool | 87 |
| 15 | Dominik Szoboszlai | MID | Liverpool | 87 |
| 16 | Elliot Anderson | MID | Man City | 87 |
| 17 | Moisés Caicedo | MID | Chelsea | 86 |
| 18 | Morgan Rogers | MID | Chelsea | 86 |
| 19 | Mateo Kovačić | MID | Man City | 86 |
| 20 | Bruno Guimarães | MID | Newcastle | 86 |
| 21 | Amadou Onana | MID | Aston Villa | 85 |
| 22 | Enzo Fernández | MID | Chelsea | 85 |
| 23 | Youri Tielemans | MID | Man United | 85 |
| 24 | Granit Xhaka | MID | Sunderland | 85 |
| 25 | Mateus Fernandes | MID | Tottenham | 85 |
| 26 | Morgan Gibbs-White | MID | Nottm Forest | 84 |
| 27 | Xavi Simons | MID | Tottenham | 84 |
| 28 | Boubacar Kamara | MID | Aston Villa | 83 |
| 29 | John McGinn | MID | Aston Villa | 83 |
| 30 | Carlos Baleba | MID | Brighton | 83 |
Midfield is the deepest position in the league and the ratings show it: six players sit at 90 or above, against four forwards and three goalkeepers. Bruno Fernandes at 95 tops it, and the reason is the scale itself — total influence rather than goals, which rewards a player carrying an entire creative burden over one taking chances inside a better structure.
Wirtz, Rice, Rodri and Ødegaard fill 92–94, and they are four different jobs at nearly the same number. Rodri is a destroyer who happens to progress the ball; Ødegaard is a creator who happens to press. One scale covering both is deliberate, and it means the ordering here rewards completeness rather than any single standout trait.
The 85–88 band is where the league's actual midfield battles live. Arsenal put Zubimendi, Merino and Eze in it, Liverpool put Gravenberch, Mac Allister and Szoboszlai, Manchester City put Reijnders, Foden and Anderson. Three clubs, nine players, separated by three rating points.
Midfield is the position where the wheel punishes you least. With 177 rated midfielders and eleven clubs represented in this top thirty, most spins give you something usable. That makes midfield the right place to take a chemistry risk and the wrong place to spend your skips — a mistake at goalkeeper is unrecoverable, a mistake here usually is not.
Granit Xhaka at 85 is the outlier worth knowing. He is the only Sunderland player in this top thirty, which makes him a rare case where a mid-table spin still returns genuine quality.
Who is the highest rated midfielder? Bruno Fernandes at 95, second only to Haaland across the whole league.
Why can a holding midfielder out-rate an attacking one? The rating measures ball progression, chance creation and defensive share together. A player doing all three at a high level out-rates one doing a single thing brilliantly.
How many midfielders are rated? All 177 across the 20 squads.
Every player carries one overall rating, editorial rather than fed from a stats API: formula-based on 2025-26 league finishes and role, then hand-adjusted and maintained against club announcements through the transfer window. The same numbers drive the draft, the Club Power Rankings and how your XI is graded.