STEVIE REVEALS HIS TOP 5 TEAMMATES

Paul Eaton 21 November 2008
	Concluding our week long 'Top 5' series with Steven Gerrard, we ask the skipper to tell us about the best players he has played with over the last ten years.
I've been fortunate to play with so many top quality players throughout my career that it's impossible to place them in any kind of order. It's hard enough to pick five - I could easily pick twenty or thirty who would deserve to be in this list, but I've managed to narrow it down to the five I consider to have been the best. It's worth pointing out that I'm only including Liverpool players in this list. I've played with some great players with England, but the Liverpool lads are the ones I've played with most so that's why I'm only selecting from them. The only order these are in relate to their position on the pitch - so we'll start from back to front and my first choice is Pepe Reina. Pepe is the best goalkeeper I have played with by a country mile. He is one of the top three in the world at the moment and certainly one of the best players I have ever been in a team alongside. He's a great character around the place. If we're successful in the future then he will have a big part to play and I'd say he's a candidate to be the next captain of Liverpool after me. Jamie Carragher would be in my top five as well. He has been with me throughout the ten years and has improved all the time. He just keeps getting better and better and over the last three or four years he has been one of the best defenders in the world. People may say I'm biased because I room with him and he's my mate, but his performance levels have backed my judgement up. Not many players perform as consistently as Carra. I have to give a mention to Robbie Fowler. He was my hero when I was younger and so to be able to play alongside him was something special and a real dream come true. He's a legend of the club whose record speaks for itself. Robbie still keeps in touch with some of the lads here and I'm sure he always will do because he loves Liverpool. I have to give my final two places to strikers as well - Michael Owen and Fernando Torres. I played with Michael in his younger days and straightaway we seemed to have an understanding on the pitch. I loved playing with him. I knew the movements he was going to make and it was almost as though we were always on the same wavelength. The same goes for Fernando as well, to be honest. The two of us complement each other well on the field and I'm sure we're still to see the very best of him in a Liverpool shirt. He's still young and I'm confident he has all the attributes to become the best player in the world. He's already one of them. So they are my top five but as I said earlier, it was a really hard choice to make because we've had some genuine top quality players at the club over the years. from liverpoolfc.tv