Great Teams Without Stars

An interesting thing this season is that very few of the Leeds regular XI are viewed popularly as stars in the league. In fact, if you check Fotmob, very few get top marks. But, we are arguably the best *team* in the league – and if Meslier wasn't having a mare of a season we'd be comfortably at the top of the table even if we granted back 2 points to the cheating Blades (the math: add at least 4 points to our total for Meslier's bizarre failure at Sunderland and his howlers at Hull this weekend, and maybe even 2 more for letting in one of the Pompey goals).

I find this really interesting and can't remember any seasons when another season when a team was arguably the best – or one of the two or three best – but it had no one that everyone else recognized as a league star. Maybe my memory is too short and I wasn't paying attention to the Championship during our brief run in the PL w/ Marcelo and then Football Terrorist Marsch/Gracia/Big Sam. (The Leeds team that won it in 2020 at least had Kalvin Phillips and Ben White (on loan).)

I'd like to read other people's views of Championship teams that were truly excellent for their seasons but that had no widely recognized stars.

One note: I think Ao Tanaka is arguably the best midfielder in the league, Struijk is probably one of if not the best CMs but I think that few other than LUFC supporters seem to think this.