Robbie Blake is the best player of the decade

Last updated : 28 May 2011 By Tony Scholes
Robbie Blake
A thread on the message board asking for a top five led to the best sixteen named players going into a voting poll over the last four days, and right from the start it was clear that Robbie, now set to enjoy a second season doing nothing at Bolton, was going to be the winner.

Over 1,000 voted and Robbie came out on top with no less than 41.2% of the vote and that was not far short of the 23.5% secured by Glen to take second place.

Robbie enjoyed two spells with the Clarets, each of three years. The first was from January 2002, when Stan Ternent paid £1 million to Bradford City for him, until January 2005 when he was sold to Birmingham.

He returned in the summer of 2007 from Leeds following their relegation to League One, and stayed with us until the end of the 2009/10 season when he refused the offer of a new deal and moved to Bolton.

It was absolutely no surprise to see Robbie and Glen in the top two places and certainly no surprise to see Robbie so convincingly out on top. The big surprise was Andy Payton securing third place with 10.1% of the vote when he'd started no more than 18 league games in the qualifying period (all of them in the 2000/01 season).

Two of those players, Little and Payton, will almost certainly feature in the voting poll during next week, again from Tuesday to Friday, for our best player of the 1990s where again a message board thread as been used to determine those players who will be listed.

Player of the Last Decade

41.2% - Robbie Blake
23.5% - Glen Little
10.1% - Andy Payton
5.5% - Wade Elliott
4.2% - Steve Davis
3.9% - Brian Jensen
2.9% - Gary Cahill
2.0% - John McGreal
1.9% - Graham Alexander
1.6% - Steven Fletcher
1.2% - Chris McCann
0.6% - Chris Eagles & Andy Gray
0.4% - Gareth Taylor & Mitchell Thomas
0.3& - Paul Cook