Whispers about young players and their fledgling talents drift around and excite all of us.

Everton's star 16-year-old centre-half Jack Rodwell is meant to be such an excellent talent that Chelsea offered to relocate his entire family en masse and buy him a four-bedroom home of his choice.

Jose Baxter and Kieran Agard are supposed to be excellent Goodison strikers in the making. Who hasn't heard of Spurs' Adel Taarabt, the new Zinedine Zidane according to some, but with his (admittedly explosive) cameos for Tottenham it is still hard to gauge just what heights he will scale.

'It seems strange to call Fabregas a youngster as his performances this season have had the assured and steady hand of an experienced professional'


To be honest all this talk of Taarabt reminds me of the youngster that sent a wave of excitement throughout the Premier League. I am still intoxicated by Wayne Rooney when he was the young, bullish Everton streetfighter. I was there in late autumn of 2002 when he flung the ball over David Seaman's head like a vandal's brick – taking down the mighty Arsenal, unbeaten in 30-matches, with one sweet shot. He's still only 22, and if it wasn't for Arsenal's Spanish genius, I would still rate Wayne as the greatest youngster in the Premier League.

Aside from my obvious bias for Rooney, there are a host of options in deciding the best young player in the Premier League.

Man UTD and Tottenham will be at the top of most people’s minds, and Arsenal too have a phalanx of starlets to choose from. And for me the best youngster in the Premier League is Cesc Fabregas.

It seems strange to call him a youngster as his performances this season have had the assured and steady hand of an experienced professional. In his man of the match performance against the elder statesman of Europe, Milan, at the San Siro, he exuded experience and precision that we all thought could only come with age.

Fabregas is aplayer with everything on his side, most obviously talent and age.

At just 20, Fabregas is a player who lets his feet do the talking but isn’t too verbose.

Cesc doesn't suffer from verbal diaorrhea, dribbling too much and succumbing to the stepover every other breath. Neither is Cesc too monosyllabic, foisting leaden passes on teammates.

No, Fabregas does everything in moderation, it is all is judged perfectly, as if he already knows it is coming.