5. Robert Pires (Arsenal)
It hardly helped Pires that he was seen as the successor to Marc Overmars when he arrived at Arsenal for only £5.3m shortly after Euro 2000, yet he also didn’t help himself by saying: “I would’ve preferred to have played for Real Madrid, but the words of [Arsene] Wenger gave me more security” and later complaining about English football’s physicality.
Pires found his first year in England difficult and, amid the occasional flashes of excellence he later regularly demonstrated, performed rather inconsistently during Arsenal’s unsuccessful 2000/01 season.
His improvement for the following season was so vast, however, that for a period he was considered almost as important to the club as Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry and was named the Football Writers’ Player of the Year for inspiring Arsenal to the 2002 Premier League and FA Cup, despite his season ending in March with a cruciate ligament injury. Thereafter, Pires remained a consistently graceful presence until his departure in 2006.