Michael Owen is just a number of high profile names to have given his take on the age-old debate, explaining how he rates Steven Gerrard higher than both Frank Lampard and Paul Scholes.

Owen played with all three during his career and while he gave praise to Lampard and Scholes, two of the best ever midfielders to ever play in the Premier League and Champions League, he went as far as saying that Gerrard was “on a different level”.

The former Real Madrid man is often ridiculed for his footballing opinions but he gave a detailed and insightful explanation on why Gerrard is the best out of the three when speaking on The Greatest Game with Jamie Carragher podcast.

“If you watch Scholesy in training, your tongue is hanging out,” Owen said.

“He can give you the eyes, you can think he’s heading it that way and he’ll almost do a reverse spinner off the other side of his head. He can drop a ball on a sixpence. He is just total and utter genius.

“But there’s that and there’s the actual practicalities of playing on a big pitch where you need size, strength, substance, running ability, all these things.

“And if you play one v one, you against you, Stevie against any of the names that you’ve played, I think he would eat them for dinner.

“Someone like Scholesy obviously had different attributes. I mean, unbelievable the way he changed his game from being a bombing midfielder scoring to a quarterback. Total genius.

“Frank Lampard, who can question his goal scoring and how he got every ounce out of his ability?

“But to me, Stevie’s on a different level than anything I’ve seen or played with and as you’ve said, I’m not blowing smoke up my a***, I’ve played with some great Man United players, Liverpool players, Real Madrid, England.

“Put it this way. If i’m saying tomorrow rewind the clock, you’re going into battle now, you’re playing in the Champions League final, who’s your first pick? I’d have Steven Gerrard as my first pick out of anyone.”

When SPORTbible put out a poll to see who the fans thought was the better player, in 2019, Scholes came out on top.

Out of the 28,000 people that voted, 38% reckon that United Scholes was the main man, with Gerrard coming in second with 36%.

Lampard, who was arguably the best goalscorer out of the three, came in third place with a disappointing 26% of the vote.

Sat next to both Gerrard and Lampard, Rio Ferdinand was asked to settle the debate during a chat on BT Sport and gave an interesting response.

“All of them would have said themselves. And that’s what top players do,” Ferdinand said.

“They back themselves in these situations and each of them would have had an argument to suggest themselves.”

source:- sportbible