2014-15 Premier League Preseason Rankings: Top Defenders

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Updated on August 9, 2014 8:51PM EST

For our 2014-15 Premier League rankings, we polled four of our writers to come up with a composite list for the upcoming year. We broke it down by position, listing our top-20 forwards, midfielders, defenders and top-10 goalkeepers.

Points were assigned to each player based on their ranking by each writer: 10 points for a first place vote, nine points for a second place vote, eight points for a third place vote and so on.

Chelsea's Thibaut Courtois is the top choice in our Goalkeeper Rankings and Everton's Leighton Baines checks in at the top spot for defenders.

The tricky part about ranking defensive players is that their stats are so volatile year-in and year-out. Players on top teams accumulate more clean sheets but goals and assists are still important.

With that said, here's what we think about this year's defensive crop:

RNK	OVERALL	PTS	LAIRD	MOSINSKI	PITNER	RADUNE
1	Leighton Baines	76	Seamus Coleman	Leighton Baines	Seamus Coleman	Branislav Ivanovic
2	Seamus Coleman	74	Leighton Baines	Branislav Ivanovic	Gary Cahill	Leighton Baines
3	Pablo Zabaleta	66	Pablo Zabaleta	Martin Skrtel	Leighton Baines	Seamus Coleman
4	Per Mertesacker	60	Gary Cahill	Pablo Zabaleta	Per Mertesacker	Gary Cahill
5	Branislav Ivanovic	56	Per Meresacker	Seamus Coleman	Laurent Koscielny	Pablo Zabaleta
6	Vincent Kompany	55	Vincent Kompany	John Terry	Vincent Kompany	Vincent Kompany
T7	Martin Skrtel	53	Luke Shaw	Per Mertesacker	Pablo Zabaleta	Laurent Koscielny
T7	Laurent Koscielny	53	Mathieu Debuchy	Laurent Koscielny	Luke Shaw	Per Mertesacker
T7	Gary Cahill	53	Martin Skrtel	Mathieu Debuchy	Martin Skrtel	Cesar Azpilicueta
10	Luke Shaw	46	John Terry	Luke Shaw	John Terry	Martin Skrtel
11	John Terry	37	Laurent Koscielny	Vincent Kompany	Mathieu Debuchy	Aleksander Kolarov
12	Mathieu Debuchy	35	Branislav Ivanovic	Jan Vertonghen	Jan Vertonghen	Martin Demichelis
13	Jan Vertonghen	28	Dejan Lovren	Aleksander Kolarov	Branislav Ivanovic	Luke Shaw
14	Aleksander Kolarov	24	Steven Caulker	Jose Enrique	Phil Jones	Kyle Walker
T15	Steven Caulker	12	Aleksander Kolarov	Felipe Luis	Ryan Shawcross	Jan Vertonghen
T15	Kyle Walker	12	Felipe Luis	Steven Caulker	Kyle Walker	Kieran Gibbs
T15	Cesar Azpilicueta	12	Jan Vertonghen	Dejan Lovren	Joel Ward	Phil Jagielka
T15	Dejan Lovren	12	Joel Ward	Jose Fonte	Phil Jagielka	Sylvain Distin
19	Felipe Luis	11	John Stones	Joel Ward	Curtis Davies	Daniel Agger
20	Joel Ward	9	Curtis Davies	Phil Jones	Geoff Cameron	Glen Johnson