6. Wes Brown

Tough-tackling, strong in the air and fast on the deck, Wes Brown is one of England's finest defenders.

He's not the most fortunate though. Surely his club and country appearance totals, while impressive, would be far higher had it not been for his awful luck with injuries.

Wes enjoyed arguably his best season in 2007/08 as a key member of Sir Alex's miserly back four. Replacing the long-term injured Gary Neville at right-back, he played in more matches than any other player on the road to winning the Barclays Premier League and Champions League. Wes also enjoyed the personal fillip of a new

four-year contract in April 2008, signed almost ten years after his debut.

That debut was the culmination of a meteoric rise through the ranks at Old Trafford - signing as a trainee in July 1996, he put pen to paper on professional forms four months later. In this first full season, 1996/97, he picked up the Jimmy Murphy Young Player of the Year award. Towards the end of his second campaign, he made his senior bow as a sub against Leeds United on 4 May 1998, and a first start against Barnsley a week later.

Brown's performances in 1998/99 caught the eye, but knee-ligament injuries ahead of the 1999/00 season and at the end of the 2002/03 campaign were bookends to a broken ankle in August 2002. Many players might have been demoralised by such wretched luck, but Brown’s grit saw him return in September 2003 and complete the rest of the 2003/04 season.

In 2005/06 he became a linchpin in the centre of defence; his no-nonsense style perfectly complimented Rio Ferdinand’s more languid approach. Opportunities were somewhat limited during 2006/07, as Nemanja Vidic forged an almost telepathic relationship with Rio in central defence. Still, Wes took his chances when they arose and passed the 250-appearance mark while

earning his fourth league winners' medal.

A fifth such medal and a second in the European Cup followed in the afore-mentioned 2007/08 campaign. However Brown's bad luck came back to bite him in the subsequent season. After rotating the right-back berth with Rafael and Gary Neville in August and September 2008, he dropped out of the running on 25 October when he damaged his ankle at Everton. Absent for three months, Wes then returned as a sub at West Brom at the end of January 2009, only to soon suffer an injury again and consequently miss out on a place in the Carling Cup final squad.