Premier League 100: Best players 100-81 featuring Arjen Robben, Patrice Evra, Freddie Ljungberg and more

We reveal the first 20 players to earn their place in our Premier League 100

Today The Independent begins counting down through the 100 greatest players ever to grace the Premier League, beginning with the twenty who place 100th-81st.

We asked all of our sportswriters to rank their greatest players in the history of the league, with each player assigned points before an overall list was then worked out.

In voting for the greatest ever Premier League player, we generally considered a few broad factors: a player’s ability and the actual application of that ability; the consistency of that application; the level they reached; their influence on the competition and – of course – their level of achievement.

Here’s our Chief Football Writer Miguel Delaney explaining exactly what we were looking for, and how the process works.

Each day this week at 10am we will be revealing twenty players, with the winner finally crowned on Friday.

All four of these legends feature in today's countdown (Independent)

Will it be Ryan Giggs or Cristiano Ronaldo? Thierry Henry or Dennis Bergkamp? Frank Lampard or John Terry? They are all in the running.

Before we reach those players however, we have our first group of Premier League legends to work through. The below players may rank from 100-81, but nevertheless have 27 titles between them – evidencing the strength in depth of the players who appear in our countdown.

PL100 countdown: 100-81:

Keep an eye on our social media as we have plenty of Premier League 100 features running in tandem with our countdown across the week.