There are some tired bodies and weary minds around the Premier League at this time.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Here, then, are the 10 Premier League outfield players to have racked up the most minutes this season. Goalkeepers don’t count, obviously, because they don’t get tired do they? But every minute played by everyone else in all competitions for club and country since the start of the season is fair game.
That obviously means a list dominated by the European teams, but that’s also kind of the point. Their lads are going to be the busiest and weariest.
10) Ryan Gravenberch (Liverpool and Netherlands) – 3964 minutes
He’s already played way more football in 2024/25 as he did in 2023/24 as he has become absolutely central to Liverpool’s success.
Visibly tired, he was taken off after 61 minutes of the Merseyside derby for only the sixth time in the Premier League this season. He has also started all but the PSV dead rubber in the Champions League while playing every minute of the Carabao Cup semi-final win over Tottenham and then all but 11 minutes across both legs of the PSG heartbreaker in the Champions League before being shuttled to centre-back and in the end sacrificed altogether as Liverpool misfired appallingly at Wembley against Newcastle.
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9) Youri Tielemans (Aston Villa and Belgium) – 4112 minutes
Started every single Premier League and Champions League game for Villa, only twice coming off before the 70-minute mark. He was spared Carabao Cup action but has been ever-present in Villa’s run to the FA Cup semi-finals.
Meanwhile, Belgium gave him a rest for their November Nations League fixtures, both of which Belgium lost. He was back in harness for a full 90 of the 3-1 defeat to Ukraine but suspended for the 3-0 second-leg win.
8) Gabriel Magalhaes (Arsenal and Brazil) – 4130 minutes
And he’d be even higher on this list had a knee injury not kept him out of two-and-a-half Premier League games and one in the Champions League.
He’s started and generally finished every other game in those two competitions, as well as playing every minute of the two-legged Carabao semi-final against Newcastle and all 120 minutes of Arsenal’s FA Cup campaign.
Also played every single minute of Brazil’s first seven World Cup qualifying games this season before – really quite shrewdly, at least from an Arsenal perspective – getting himself suspended and thus missing all that Argentina unpleasantness.
And now he is injured again.
7) Mohamed Salah (Liverpool and Egypt) – 4131 minutes
Climbing steadily after his ill-fated PSG and Newcastle exertions. Salah has started every one of Liverpool’s 29 Premier League games this season and none of his five substitutions have occurred before the 73rd minute.
Rested, along with most of Liverpool’s big guns for the PSV dead rubber at the end of the Champions League league phase but other than that played all but about half-an-hour of Liverpool’s campaign.
There’s another few hundred minutes of Carabao action in there, including all but the last eight minutes of the two-legged semi-final against Tottenham and technically the entirety of the final.
Indeed, all that is keeping Salah from the business end of this list is a lighter-than-typical international schedule. He was released early from the October break and not called up at all for the November games, meaning he has made only five international appearances this season rather than the numbers chalked up by some others.
6) Erling Haaland (Man City and Norway) – 4139 minutes
A man visibly in need of a rest when he and City were at the late-2024 worst, but a man for whom that rest would never come because City had decided, in their great wisdom, that when you have the Goalbot 3000 you don’t really need a Julian Alvarez. (Alvarez, for what it’s worth, has himself chalked up 4056 minutes for club and country this season).
The nearest thing Haaland had had to a rest in this overworked season is either coming off for the last half-hour of the 6-0 win at Ipswich if you want to be kind about it, or the first half of the 5-1 defeat against Arsenal in which he infamously touched the ball six times if you want to be a dick about it.
We will choose, as we always will, the latter approach.
Has also had a couple of short rests at the end of a couple of City’s early Champions League games before it all got very fraught and has managed to rack up these huge numbers without dirtying his boots or dignity for a single second of Carabao action, although City couldn’t even manage to sort out Plymouth at home in the FA Cup without needing Haaland on board for the final half-hour.
Also played almost every minute of Norway’s Nations League campaign, with the seven minutes of rest he was granted at the end of a 4-1 win over Slovenia and 5-0 win over Kazakhstan probably not recharging the ol’ batteries all that much really.
The machine finally and inevitably broke down as he missed costly defeats v Real Madrid and Liverpool before returning to score the 20th league goal of what has been by his standards a disappointing season in a 1-0 win at Spurs.
Was only asked to give up 78 minutes of his time for Norway’s World Cup qualification win over Moldova, though, so that’s something, but chalked up another full 90 against Israel.
Now might well be broken again.
The ridiculous stats of Erling Haaland: 84 Premier League goals at 21 Premier League grounds
5) Josko Gvardiol (Man City and Croatia) – 4228 minutes
Manchester City signed one of the best young centre-backs in the world and Pep Guardiola promptly turned him into a relentless goalscoring force of a left-back, which is a very good bit.
Has missed only one game in the Premier League and Champions League this season and even got a run-out in both City’s Carabao games. Which seems a bit much.
Also near ever-present across eight games and four international breaks for Croatia, who foolishly still appear to consider him a centre-back.
4) Diogo Dalot (Man United and Portugal) – 4413 minutes
Left-back, right-back, left wing-back, right wing-back. One side of the pitch or the other, in one United manager’s system or another, he’s been out there. United’s Mr Dependable.
Had he not cannily got himself 150 minutes of rest by getting sent off after an hour of the FA Cup clash at Arsenal, he’d be nudging towards top spot here.
What catches the eye with Dalot is that there is no respite. No competition where he is spared. He has started all the Premier League games for which he was available, started seven and played 45 minutes of the other one of United’s eight Europa League as well as at least an hour of all five of United’s games in the FA Cup and Carabao Cup. He even played 90 minutes in the Community Shield.
In summary, then: the only United game in which he has not been involved at all was the one for which he was suspended. No wonder he got himself sent off just to get his trotters up for a bit. Can’t be good for United that two of the three busiest Premier League-based players this season are theirs, and both appear something close to utterly indispensable.
Portugal are, at least, a bit more forgiving, allowing Dalot the rare luxury this season of watching an entire game from the bench against Scotland while requiring a full 90 from him in only three of their other seven games.
3) William Saliba (Arsenal and France) – 4421 minutes
Truly extraordinary numbers, especially when you consider that Saliba missed two games completely through injury, was able to be rested for Arsenal’s final league phase game in the Champions League and the entirely irrelevant second leg against PSV, and also saved himself 150 minutes of Premier League toil with that red card at Bournemouth that was, like all Arsenal red cards, entirely without controversy.
In part, this is the centre-back’s lot. They are so very rarely the players given a few minutes’ rest here and there at the end of games long won, or when the manager is looking to shake things up in the closing stages.
And you can add international duty to that as well, with seven 90-minute appearances for France in the Nations League to also factor in here.
2) Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool and Netherlands) – 4516 minutes
Hasn’t missed a single minute of Liverpool’s Premier League season and also played every minute of the seven Champions League league phase games that actually mattered as well as the entirety of an exhausting and ultimately futile pair of last-16 games against Paris St-Germain
You’d imagine some kind of Premier League rest might be coming his way given Liverpool’s lead, but given he wasn’t rested for Southampton at home in between those PSG games you do wonder. And he does understandably look like he could do with a breather.
Hadn’t been involved in the Carabao until the semi-finals but played both legs against Spurs and was apparently on the pitch for the entirety of the final against Newcastle, not that you’d have noticed.
A red card against Hungary for two quick bookings late on in that game saved him a bit of Nations League work for Netherlands but still over 500 minutes to chuck in the pot there.
1) Bruno Fernandes (Man United and Portugal) – 4662 minutes
A couple of striking things about this Bruno effort after he became the first Premier League player to tick past the 4000-minute mark and then just carried on being asked to play all the minutes in all the games.
Firstly, he’s clearly completely indispensable to Man United despite it not really being entirely clear Ruben Amorim knows precisely how best to use him in his system. He knows only that use him he must, as he just keeps showing. Especially against Arsenal, but especially against Real Sociedad and then once again against Ipswich.
Secondly, it’s doubly impressive to have racked up more minutes than any other outfielder in the Premier League during a season where you’ve been sent off not once, not twice but thrice. Even with one of those being rescinded and thus not compounded by suspension, it’s some effort.
The final minutes at Porto and the ensuing suspension against Fenerbahce are the only minutes Bruno has missed in the Europa League this season, while he has started every Premier League game for which he wasn’t suspended. United lost 2-0 to Newcastle in his absence, and he was conspicuously missed.
Of his 27 Premier League starts that have not been ended prematurely by the referee, Bruno has only three times failed to rack up the full 90. And still had a pretty full shift on those occasions, with 79 minutes at Brighton, 65 in the 4-0 win over Everton and 76 in the 3-2 defeat to Nottingham Forest.
Played all 330 minutes of United’s exhausting and (despite his own considerable efforts) futile FA Cup defence as well as full 90s in the Carabao against both Leicester and Tottenham. With a cool 630 minutes of Nations League action for Portugal thrown in for good measure.
By definition, there are few players on this list their teams can cope without, but few feel more important to the whole feel of their teams than Bruno and Man United. And that’s probably because of rather than despite the fact they still so often look quite ropey even when he is there.
It’s little wonder that Real Madrid want him; he should want them too.
