Who Was the Best Player: Paul Scholes, Frank Lampard or Steven Gerrard? [A detailed comparison]

Between the mid 90s and roughly the early 2010s, England was blessed with a vast array of incredibly talented football players in virtually every position. So much so, that the fact that these players failed to win any major on it will forever remain as a question of what could have been. In any case, this is a debate for another day. Today however, we are here to discuss three particular players who were part of this golden generation and who are frequently compared to one another. When you look into the similarities between these three individuals based on their playing careers, it's easy to see why the comparisons are so prevalent. Each player was born within six years of one another, each spent almost the entirety of their career at one club, these clubs happening to be rivals of one another, they each retired within three years of one another and finally, they have all predominantly played in central midfield positions throughout their entire careers. As I'm sure you've seen the thumbnail and read the title of this video by now, you've probably guessed by now that the players that I'm referring to are none other than Paul Scores, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard. And right off the bat, it's worth noting that although they share many similarities, all three of these players had different responsibilities within their respective teams. At the get-go, this makes it quite difficult to compare them. But none of that really matters, does it? Because at the end of the day, us fans will always come back to the same question. Just who was the best player between Paul Scores, Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard? What's up everyone, hope you're all doing well and welcome to the channel. In this video, we'll be taking a detailed look at the careers of these three icons and hopefully, making a decision on who was the best player out of the three. Make sure to stick to the end of the video to see who came out on top. First things first, for anyone that's unaware of these three players, let me provide you with a brief overview of their careers. And for anyone that's fully aware of these players' backgrounds, of which I'm sure there are quite a few, this video is timestamped, so feel free to skip ahead to the comparison if you want. Let's start things off with Paul Scores. Born and bred in Manchester, Paul Scores is one of the most recognised and celebrated players from Manchester United's most successful period in history. He began his professional playing career with Manchester United in 1993. Although he is well known as one of the greatest midfielders in English history, he actually started his career off as a striker. His ball striking technique, excellent ball control and tireless work rate made him a real threat in front of goal. After an injury to Roy Keane in 1997, Scores was moved into the central midfield position where he spent the remainder of his career. After spending 20 years playing for Manchester United, Scores retired from professional football in 2013 at 38 years of age. This was actually his second retirement, but that's a story for another day. Moving on to Steven Gerrard. Stevie G is widely regarded as not only the best captain, but also the best player in Liverpool history. He truly was a generational talent, winning a multitude of club and personal awards during a time where Liverpool frequently failed to perform in the Premier League. He began his professional career with Liverpool in 1998. Similar to Scores, Gerrard did not play in the central midfield position from the offset of his career. Instead, he was developed in several different positions before he was eventually recognised as being most effective in the middle of the park. After spending 17 years in Liverpool colours, Gerrard transferred to LA Galaxy in 2015. He went on to play in Los Angeles for a single season before eventually retiring from professional football altogether in 2016. And finally we have Frank Lampard. Yet another generational talent that is widely considered to be the best player in the history of his club, the club being Chelsea Football Club. Lampard began his career in 1995 with West Ham. He transferred to Chelsea in 2001 and went on to spend 13 years with the club. He eventually left Chelsea in 2014 and subsequently joined Manchester City and then New York City. He spent one year at each of these clubs in 2015 and 2016 respectively before retiring from the game altogether in 2016. Lampard spent most of his career in various midfield positions, but was also utilised as a second striker on occasion. To give you an idea of how prolific this man was throughout his career, he is currently the fifth highest goal scorer in Premier League history with 177 goals in total. He is also one of two midfielders to feature in the top 20 goal scorers of all time in the competition. The other midfielder is Steven Gerrard, in 18th place with 120 goals. So now that that's out of the way and we're all on the same page, let's get into the comparison. So here's how this comparison is going to work. Six separate categories will be used to compare each of these three players. To be more specific, they will be compared based on their in-game statistics, technical ability, leadership and influence, individual awards and team-based awards. Finally, they will all be assessed based on their overall versatility and longevity. The final criteria is understandably more subjective than the other two. This is a measure of which player was able to best adapt their playing style and position over the course of their career. All three players played football professionally for roughly two decades, so this is essentially an assessment of how effective they were able to remain despite the natural evolution of the game over time. Just as an aside, I will only be considering their playing careers within the English Premier League. This means that Lampard's time playing for New York City will not be considered. Likewise, Gerrard's time in Los Angeles will not be considered. Now, when I set out to actually compare these three players from a statistical point of view, I was hoping to compare each player based on several criteria. These criteria included key passes, assists, pass completion, goals, dribbles completed, tackles won, distance covered and many more. Seeing as these players were midfielders and were given several tasks and responsibilities, I wanted to leave no stone unturned and be as objective as possible. Unfortunately, as stated on the Premier League website itself, the majority of these statistics were only recorded comprehensively starting from 2006 onwards. Seeing as all three of these players started their playing careers in the early to mid 90s, comparing them from a statistical point of view with the data available doesn't yield a concrete outcome. As a side note, this is also a warning to anyone that sees any statistical comparisons between these three dating from before 2006 to just double check how complete the stats actually are and where they're getting the stats from. Having said that, there are a select few of statistics that have been recorded since the beginning of the Premier League. The ones most relevant to this discussion are goals, assists and appearances. When we use these stats alone as a basis for comparison, Lampard clearly wins. As previously mentioned, these stats alone fail to paint a full picture of how effective these players were overall. However, seeing as how it's all we have and taking into consideration how dominant Lampard's numbers are, I am quite comfortable with giving him the win in this category. Onto technical abilities and game intelligence. As per the reasons I've stated previously, there are unfortunately no reliable statistics available for us to give a basis for this category. The main stats we would look for here are dribbles completed, pass completion rate for both long and short passes, interceptions, tackle success rate and ball recoveries. However, all the same, football is not only about statistics. There are further aspects that can't really be recorded as stats that also need to be considered in this as well. Those aspects, to name a few, are first touch, aggression, composure, vision, defensive and offensive awareness and defensive and offensive positioning. Therefore, this answer will contain a tad bit of subjectivity. Lampard was undoubtedly highly technical and hard-working and definitely edges it from an offensive awareness and positioning perspective. Likewise, Gerrard was extremely well-rounded in all aspects and was probably the more defensive of the three. However, Scholes has to take this round in my opinion. His ability to never lose the ball, dribble out of tight spaces, recycle possession, find players from deep and also contribute defensively and offensively was second to none in my opinion. His overall understanding of the game allowed him to dictate the pace of each match in a way that is still yet to be matched in the Premier League. Therefore, in my opinion, Scholes takes this round. Now onto leadership and influence. Both Lampard and Scholes have been appointed as captains for Chelsea and United in the past. However, this was almost always on a temporary basis with the reasoning being that the actual captain of their clubs could not play due to injury or some other factor. Steven Gerrard is the only player amongst these three that was ever the official captain of their team and there was good reason for this. Gerrard had the ability to not only be a vocal presence on the field but also to truly lead by example. The best examples of this in action are the 2007 Champions League final and the 2006 FA Cup final. In both cases, Liverpool were trailing the opposition at one point and he was able to act as the driving force of the team to motivate them for the win. Both games ended up being 3-3 at the end of normal time with Liverpool winning on penalties on both occasions and Gerrard scoring very important goals in both matches. He obviously did not accomplish these victories single-handedly but his influence cannot be understated here. Something else to consider is that while Lampard and Scholes were both leaders in their own right, they were almost always surrounded by other world-class players and leaders. No disrespect to Liverpool of course, but quite frankly, Gerrard was never surrounded by the calibre of player that the other two had. This amplifies his achievements and his incredible career even more. Now onto individual achievements. If I'm being completely honest, before even beginning the research for this category, I was convinced that Frank Lampard would be head and shoulders above the other two in terms of personal achievements. Having watched him fully in his prime, all I remember is this guy outscoring strikers left, right and centre from the midfield. I mean, I know Gerrard was quite prolific in terms of awards too, but I must admit that I was surprised at how close their personal trophy hauls are. They've both won multiple Premier League Player of the Month awards throughout their careers, not to mention that they've both won two English Player of the Year awards and one Football Writers Association awards each. However, I feel that there has to be a winner in each category, and seeing as Lampard has achieved the highest Ballon d'Or ranking of the two in his career, finishing second in 2005, this will have to be used as a tiebreaker. Now, despite the fact that Gerrard's highest Ballon d'Or ranking is third, Lampard wins this round. Fun fact, Gerrard and Lampard actually both achieved their highest ever Ballon d'Or ranking in the same year. Safe to say that 2005 was a good year for English Bonus fun fact, Scholes has received five Ballon d'Or nominations throughout his career, but he surprisingly never received even a single vote. Therefore, it's very difficult to assess what his highest ranking is. Regardless of who you think the best player amongst these three is, I think we can all agree that the fact that Scholes never received even a single vote is a little odd to say the least. Moving along to team awards, and there was ever only going to be one winner here. While all three players played for highly successful teams, Scholes played for the most successful team in the country for two decades. And while we're on the subject of team awards, I fully understand that these may not be the best true reflection of the ability of a player as an individual. However, as a member of a team, they are entitled to take some responsibility for these achievements. Finally, on to versatility and longevity. As previously stated, this is a common knowledge that younger players have less wear and tear and are thus able to output a much higher work rate on the pitch. Naturally, as players age, they lose this ability. However, they also gain experience and in-game intelligence. This allows them to conserve their energy for when it is needed and still remain effective. Generally, what this looks like for midfielders is that they slowly tend to be positioned deeper and deeper in the field. This is so that they can be positioned outside of the more congested areas of the pitch, have a wider view of the game and are thus able to better choose how to spend their energy. Now, let's shift the focus back to Scholes, Gerrard and Lampard. All of these players were deployed as box-to-box midfielders, dynamic number eights, attacking midfielders and much, much more throughout varying points in their careers. Subsequently, all three were understandably also moved deeper and deeper towards the end of their careers. While all three possessed great experience and great game intelligence in their later years, Scholes was undoubtedly the one that managed to stay effective for the longest. Seeing as how the name of the game in deep-lying positions is ball distribution and ball retention, this only makes sense. In Scholes' second last season with Manchester United, at 38 years of age, he was able to achieve a 92% pass completion rate while only losing possession on average once every 154 minutes. Comparatively, Lampard and Gerrard played their last seasons in England at 36 and 35 years of age and both of them achieved an 85% pass completion rate in their final seasons. While these numbers are obviously elite, Scholes was just on another level in this department. Therefore, this category has to go to Scholes. So, if we tally up the scores based on the criteria used in this video essay, Scholes comes out on top. He wins 3 out of the 6 categories with Lampard in 2nd place with 2 and Gerrard in 3rd place with 1. As usual, all sources for the information presented in this video can be found on my website footballiconic.com. You can find the link in the description. In closing, these are all fantastic players and have all contributed greatly to the world of football. Imagine if, by some miracle, there was ever a point in time where they all played for the same team and we actually utilized all their amazing abilities to their fullest. Alas, we will never know how that could have turned out. In all seriousness, despite the similarities noted in this video, I just want to reiterate that each player fulfilled vastly different roles in their clubs at their respective peaks. Lampard, in his prime, was a true number 8 focusing in large part on offense. I mean, the guy scored 22 goals and made 14 assists in 2010 as a midfielder. Gerrard, in his prime, was a true box-to-box midfielder, capable of being at either end of the pitch at a moment's notice and contributing greatly wherever he was. Adding on to that, he was one of the greatest leaders of all time. Scholes, on the other hand, was one of the greatest deep-lying midfielders of all time in his prime, a master at keeping possession and controlling the tempo of the game. But in truth, he could do it all. Defend, attack, the whole deal. At the end of the day, depending on who you ask, there are several reasons that point towards any of these players being superior and realistically, this argument can go either way. In essence, this debate will always be open to interpretation. However, with that in mind, this is still quite a fun debate to have. It's always interesting hearing everyone's take on these legends. On that note, I'd be interested in hearing your take on these players. Comment below who you think was the best out of the three and why. Just as a side note, I do plan on doing longer form videos dedicated to each of these players specifically in a similar format to all of my previous videos. All of that plus more great content will be coming very soon. And there we have it. If you've made it this far in the video, thanks so much for watching. This video was really fun to make and if you enjoyed the content, please feel free to leave a like. And if you'd like to see more, consider checking out my channel and perhaps even subscribing for future videos. Anyway, that's all for today, I hope you're all having a great day, cheers and I'll catch you in the next one.