The Premier League announced the first two entrants of its Hall of Fame recently, with Alan Shearer and Thierry Henry getting the nod over others. Manchester United legend, Ryan Giggs, was reportedly left stunned by the league’s decision not to include him in the first batch.
According to a report by the Mirror, Manchester United great Ryan Giggs was left shocked after being snubbed for the Premier League Hall of Fame. The Welshman was reportedly removed from the roster at the last minute due to an active charge of him assaulting two women. Instead, Arsenal great Thierry Henry was picked to be inducted alongside the league’s record goalscorer, Alan Shearer.
The Premier League later revealed a 23-man shortlist to select the next six players to be inducted. The likes of Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Paul Scholes, Robin Van Persie, and Rio Ferdinand were all included in the shortlist. However, Giggs was dropped completely from the fan voting due to the current controversy surrounding him.
The Welshman won the league a record number of times during his playing days. He was a part of all thirteen Manchester United teams which won the league during Sir Alex Ferguson’s reign as the manager of the club. Giggs also won four FA Cups, three English Football League Cups, and two UEFA Champions League titles with Manchester United.
Individually, Giggs was named in the PFA Team of the Year six times while he was also included in the PFA Team of the Century. The Welshman was also crowned the Best Player at the Premier League 20 Seasons Award, which covered the time period between the 1992/93 and the 2011/12 seasons. In his 24 years at the club, Giggs scored a total of 168 goals. He netted 109 times in the Premier League, which makes him the 24th highest scorer in the competition’s history.
While the two players picked to be the first entrants in the Premier League hall of fame – Henry and Shearer – are lagging some way behind Giggs in terms of the total trophy haul, they more than make up for it in terms of other achievements. Despite the pair having a combined three Premier League titles, they make up for a total of 475 goals.
Shearer is the all-time top scorer of the Premier League since the competition’s inception in 1992. The Englishman scored 260 goals for two clubs but was able to get his hands on only one league title. Shearer’s crowning moment as a Premier League legend came in 1995 when he led Blackburn Rovers to an unprecedented league title. Blackburn scored a total of 80 goals in 42 matches that season, nearly half of which were scored by Shearer.
The Englishman scored 130 goals across four seasons for the Rover before securing a transfer to Newcastle United. The Magpies were fighting for titles themselves during that time, but Shearer was unable to repeat his Blackburn heroics with them. In the one decade he spent at the club until his retirement, he scored more than two hundred goals for the club across all competitions.
Thierry Henry became the other entrant of the Premier League Hall of Fame. While he did not score as many goals as Shearer, he did manage to net them with more frequency than any player in league history. His 0.68 goals-per-match rate is the joint highest record in the league, along with Tottenham Hotspur star Harry Kane. The Frenchman scored 175 goals in 258 appearances for Arsenal and helped them win two Premier League titles. One of those titles the Gunners won by remaining unbeaten throughout the season – a feat which has not been achieved before or since.
