Who has been sent off most in the Premier League?

Ferguson's eight were all for Everton, across a Premier League career that ran from 1994/95 to 2005/06 with a spell at Newcastle in the middle. A striker is rarely sent off for the reasons a defender is. Ferguson's game was built on physical contact with centre-backs, and a forward who plays that way spends ninety minutes one challenge away from a referee's decision.

Vieira's eight were all for Arsenal too, although he later played for Manchester City. He made 307 Premier League appearances in all, which works out at a red card roughly every 38 games. He was also booked 76 times. Put another way, he finished 299 of his 307 league matches on the pitch, more than 97 per cent of them, and the eight he did not are the ones people remember.

Dunne's eight are split between Manchester City and Everton over 431 games, roughly one every 54. Dunne also holds a less welcome Premier League record, the most own goals, and both come from the same place: a long career spent in the middle of his own penalty area, where the hardest decisions happen.

On rate, nobody comes close to Vinnie Jones. His seven red cards all came for Wimbledon between 1992/93 and 1997/98, six seasons in the Premier League. Every other player on seven needed at least a decade to get there. Jones arrived in the new league with his reputation already made in the old First Division, and the cards followed.

Roy Keane's seven were all for Manchester United, and most of them are part of the legend: the furious midfielder who set the tone for a side that won seven titles with him in it. Nicky Butt, his partner in that midfield for years, also has seven, from 411 games across United, Newcastle and Birmingham. United's central midfield of the late 1990s accounts for fourteen of the table's red cards between two players.

Alan Smith, on seven for Leeds, United and Newcastle, and Younès Kaboul, on seven mostly for Tottenham, Portsmouth and Sunderland, complete the second rank.

A red-card table is usually imagined as a list of centre-backs and holding midfielders, and much of this one is. But five of the twenty played most of their football in attack: Ferguson, Alan Smith, Andy Cole, John Hartson and Luís Boa Morte. Smith began as a striker at Leeds before Manchester United moved him into midfield, so his seven straddle both roles.

Cole's six are the most surprising. He scored 187 Premier League goals for Newcastle, United, Blackburn and others, and was known far more for his finishing than his temper. Hartson's six came at Arsenal, West Ham and Wimbledon in only seven seasons, a rate nearer Vinnie Jones's than Cole's. A forward who leads the line against two centre-backs takes as many knocks as he gives, and a few of those exchanges end with the referee's hand in the air.

Arsenal of the late 1990s show up too. Vieira's eight and Martin Keown's six were all for the club, and Hartson's first Premier League seasons were there. That side won titles and had a reputation for dismissals in the same years.

Gareth Barry is the most booked player in Premier League history, with 123 yellow cards. He was sent off six times in 653 games, once every 109 matches. That gap is the best evidence that the two records measure different things. Barry was cautioned for tactical fouls, the deliberate trip to stop a counter-attack. He almost never lost his temper, and so almost never took the second card.

John Terry's six in 492 games for Chelsea and Nemanja Vidić's six in nine seasons at United are the same kind of total from the other end of the pitch: centre-backs whose job involved the last-ditch tackle. Vidić's rate is the higher of the two.

Lewis Dunk is the only player in the table still active, on six for Brighton since 2017/18. Two more would take him level with Ferguson, Vieira and Dunne. It is a record nobody sets out to break, and one built mostly in the 1990s and 2000s. If anyone does join the three, Dunk is the likeliest.

In Top 10 a red-card board is the hardest of all to complete, because two cards separate the whole table and luck decides much of the order. Start with the three on eight, then the United midfield, then Vinnie Jones. After that, think of centre-backs who played for a long time, and of players remembered for one famous moment of temper rather than a career of them. Joey Barton, Jonjo Shelvey and Lee Cattermole all have six.

Cattermole is worth a second look. His six red cards came for Sunderland and Wigan, and across 271 games for those two clubs and Middlesbrough he was booked 88 times, a yellow card roughly every three matches. No one on the most-booked list was cautioned more often per game, and he stayed short of the totals of Barry or Vieira mainly because his Premier League career was so much shorter.