The 2010s gave the Premier League two City sides that got to 100 points or near enough, a Liverpool team that lost one league game in a whole season and still came second, and Leicester. Picking one XI from all that is mostly a question of who you leave out. I've only counted Premier League seasons from 2010-11 to 2019-20, so what Agüero did at Atlético or Kane did in Munich doesn't come into it.
Where I give years, they're the player's time at the club where he did his best work in the decade.
The XI
4-3-3, more or less. Kane drops off into the space behind Agüero, Salah comes in off the right, and Robertson gets the whole left side to run into. Silva and De Bruyne would sort the rest out between them.
Goalkeeper
If you saw David de Gea make 14 saves at the Emirates in December 2017, you'll know why I didn't think too long about this one. He was United's player of the year four times in five seasons, which tells you how much of the post-Ferguson mess he spent holding together, and he won the Golden Glove in 2017-18 as well. Alisson and Ederson were better with their feet. Neither spent five years keeping a bad United side in games. (Manchester United 2011 to 2023.)
Defence
Kyle Walker was PFA Young Player of the Year at Spurs in 2012, and later his pace was what let Guardiola push the back line up to halfway. Trent Alexander-Arnold will be most people's pick at right back, and I'll come back to him. (Tottenham 2009 to 2017, Manchester City 2017 to 2025.)
That shot against Leicester in May 2019 is the first thing I think of with Vincent Kompany. Thirty yards out, two games left in a title race, and by his own account his teammates were telling him not to hit it. Seven years earlier he'd scored the header against United at the Etihad, a 1-0 in April 2012 that put City top with two games to go. He captained them to four titles in all. He was injured an awful lot, and you'd probably get a better attendance record from Terry or Vidić, but when Kompany was fit City defended like a different team, and I'd rather have fewer games of him than a full season of either. (Manchester City 2008 to 2019.)
Virgil van Dijk only had about two and a half seasons of the decade at Liverpool, and it's still an easy call. He was PFA Players' Player of the Year in 2018-19 and second to Messi for the Ballon d'Or, and that June he was at the heart of the back four that beat Spurs 2-0 in the Champions League final in Madrid. Liverpool stopped leaking goals the moment he arrived from Southampton in January 2018, where he'd been very good already. (Liverpool from 2018.)
Leighton Baines played nearly the whole decade at Everton and was brilliant for most of it, and I've still left him out. Ashley Cole was at Chelsea until 2014 too. But Andy Robertson went from Hull's relegation season to winning the Champions League and the league in three years, and his runs down the left were half of how Klopp's team attacked. Baines was better for longer. For one XI I'll take Robertson at his best. (Liverpool from 2017.)
Midfield
N'Golo Kanté won the league in back-to-back seasons with two different clubs, Leicester then Chelsea, the first outfield player to do it since Cantona with Leeds and United. The PFA and FWA awards followed in 2017. I spent a long time trying to get Yaya Touré in instead, and couldn't, mostly because with Kanté behind them the other two never have to worry about going forward. (Leicester 2015 to 2016, Chelsea 2016 to 2023.)
Kevin De Bruyne had 20 assists in 2019-20, level with Thierry Henry's Premier League record, and won Player of the Season for it. Chelsea had let him go after a handful of games. (Manchester City 2015 to 2025.)
David Silva came from Valencia in the first summer of the decade and left in the last one, with four league titles in between. He scored one of the six at Old Trafford in October 2011, the 6-1 that told everyone City were serious, but goals were never really his thing. Picking a team for ten years, I want someone who was good for all ten, and he was. (Manchester City 2010 to 2020.)
Attack
Thirty-two league goals in his first season at Liverpool, a record for a 38-game season at the time, and Mohamed Salah had been sold by Chelsea after 13 league games. He shared another Golden Boot three ways the year after, and won the title in 2019-20. (Liverpool from 2017.)
93:20 against QPR, and that would do. Sergio Agüero also holds the Premier League record of 12 hat-tricks, scored five against Newcastle in about 20 minutes in October 2015, and won four titles in the decade before a fifth in 2021. He was the Premier League's top scorer across the 2010s too, and if I could only have one striker from it, I'd have him. (Manchester City 2011 to 2021.)
Harry Kane won the Golden Boot in 2015-16 and 2016-17. On Boxing Day 2017 he got a hat-trick against Southampton at Wembley, which took him to 39 Premier League goals for the calendar year and past Alan Shearer's record. No league title, no medal at all with Spurs, and some of you will knock him for it. I wouldn't. He scored that many in a team that was never quite good enough around him. (Tottenham 2009 to 2023.)
Manager
Pep Guardiola was the first to 100 points, in 2017-18, then got 98 and a domestic treble the year after. Alex Ferguson won two titles in this decade, his last in 2013, and Jürgen Klopp's 2019-20 team was close to unplayable. Claudio Ranieri is the romantic choice and I'd love it, but this XI plays the way Guardiola's City did, so he's the one picking it.
Who misses out
Eden Hazard is the hardest to leave out. Two titles at Chelsea, PFA Players' Player of the Year in 2015, and if you swap him in for Kane and push Salah up front, I won't argue much.
Luis Suárez scored 31 league goals in 2013-14 after missing the start of the season through suspension, and that might be the best single season anyone had in the decade. I just can't pick him on three and a half years at Liverpool when the only thing he won there was the 2012 League Cup.
Yaya Touré got 20 league goals from midfield in that same 2013-14 season, as City won the title. I still went with Kanté, and I'm not fully sure I'm right. (Manchester City 2010 to 2018.)
Trent Alexander-Arnold took the right back job and turned it into a creative position. Walker defends better. That's my whole case, and I know it's thin.
Steven Gerrard came so close in 2013-14, but his best years were the decade before. Jamie Vardy scored in 11 league games in a row in 2015, a record, and won the title. Gareth Bale did the PFA and FWA double at Spurs in 2013 before he left for Madrid. Terry and Vidić both won titles in the decade, and Van Persie's 26 league goals won Ferguson his last one in 2012-13, but none of them shift Kompany, Van Dijk, Agüero or Kane.
Pick your own
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