TEAMtalk Insider: TEAMtalk Top 10

We’ve been running our ‘Top 10’ feature all season and Simonsen has got more than his fair share of stick from his team-mates, with pretty much all of them rating him as the dressing room’s worst dressed.

I’ve has now managed to get hold of the former Everton keeper, not just to get his reaction, but also to make my own decision on his dress sense!

The 29-year-old has been at Stoke since 2004, but he started his career eight years before that, joining Tranmere as a 17-year-old in August 1996.

Simonsen soon made an impression at Prenton Park and in November ’97 he made his first-team debut for Rovers, coincidentally in a 3-1 win against Stoke.

The South Shields-born stopper went on to make 32 appearances that season and a series of top-quality performances, including a club-record seven successive clean sheets, saw him make a name for himself as one of the country’s most promising young keepers.

He represented England at Youth level – four Under-21 appearances were to follow – so it came as no surprise when early in the 1998-99 season, just five games into the new season, a Premier League club came calling.

That club was Tranmere’s near neighbours Everton and Simonsen soon crossed the Mersey, aged just 19, for £3.3million – a record for any British teenager. In fact at that time, only Ronaldo (of Barcelona and Inter Milan fame) had cost more as a teen.

Big things were expected of Simonsen then, but the man brought in as Neville Southall’s long-term successor struggled for games at Goodison Park and did not make his Toffees debut until September ’99, in a League Cup game against Oxford.

His league bow followed later that season but by the start of the 2001-02 campaign, after three years at the club, Simonsen had just two Premier League substitute appearances to his name largely in part to the form of Thomas Myhre and Paul Gerrard.

Then in November 2001, after a series of mistakes by Gerrard, Simonsen was handed the number one jersey by Walter Smith and he impressed as he was finally handed a run of games.

Unfortunately Smith was replaced by David Moyes in March 2002 and after initially being given a chance to impress his new manager, Simonsen soon found himself out of the side.

The 2002-03 and 03-04 campaigns saw him make just three further appearances so it came as no surprise when he made a free-transfer switch to Stoke in the summer of 2004.

He was quickly installed as the Potters’ first choice number one, often keeping Ed De Goey out of the team, and ended his first season at the Britannia Stadium as the players’ Player of the Season award.

He also set a new club record of consecutive clean sheets when keeping seven in the 2006-07 season and went on to play a crucial role in the club’s promotion to the Premier League last season.

Thomas Sorensen has taken his place for the majority of this campaign but Simonsen has proved an able debuty when called upon and remains an important member of Tony Pulis’ squad.

Here are his answers to TEAMtalk’s Top 10:

What club did you support growing up? I grew up as a Sunderland supporter.

What’s been the highlight of your career so far? Definitely winning promotion with Stoke City last season – that was by far the greatest moment. The highlight of the season was probably when it all started off at the first game at Cardiff when I saved the penalty and the follow up. That was the most memorable game.

Who have been the biggest influences on your career and have you got or had any heroes in life? There’s not been one single person particularly. The major influences from the early days of my career were my coaches and people that I’d worked with at Tranmere and Everton but there’s no one individual that stands out, everybody I’ve worked with has had an influence on my career in one way or another.

What are your aims with Stoke City and what is your ultimate ambition in football? My short-term aim is to get into the side on a regular basis and hopefully on one of these days that chance will come along. After that I want to help keep us in the Premier League this season, but I don’t look any further than that.

If you weren’t a footballer then what would you be? I could possibly be a gardener, I don’t mind a bit of gardening! I dabble a bit, I can pot a plant so I definitely count myself a gardener.

Who is the best player you’ve ever played with and who’s the best player you’ve ever played against? The best player I’ve ever played with would definitely be Paul Gascoigne (at Everton) and the best player I’ve played against would have to be Alan Shearer who always had a knack of scoring goals past me – as he did with pretty much everyone else to be fair!

Who do you rate as the best player in the world today and who’s the best in your position? I don’t watch a lot of world football so I’ll stick to England and I know a lot don’t agree, but I’d go for David James. And another one I like a lot is Shay Given. The best player overall at the moment would have to be Cristiano Ronaldo.

Who’s the hardest player in the squad? Carl Dickinson likes to put his foot in, he doesn’t mind doing that, so if you’ve got a one on one with him in training it’s more than likely I’ll pull out. Not one to mess with!

Who’s the biggest prankster at Stoke and what’s the best prank you’ve ever played or had played on you? There’s a lot of pranks going on and when Parky (Jon Parkin) was here he used to do a lot. He used to sometimes get some shoes I had and tie them all up in tape with a little ball, leave a fiver in them and hang them up on the ceiling and say go on, there’s a fiver for you.

So he was quite funny but there’s a few of them in there hanging people’s clothes up on pegs they don’t agree to and things like that, but it’s all good and enjoyable.

And finally, the big one. What do you make of the stick you’ve been getting about your clobber? And who do you reckon the worst dressed is? I’ve had this for a while now and it doesn’t bother me whatsoever. I think the other lads expect me to come in with something they don’t appreciate and I never disappoint them! (Editors note: Simmo was wearing a shirt and tank top – but I’m saying nothing).

There’s plenty to choose from in the worst dressed stakes anyway, but at the moment I’d probably point to Ricardo Fuller – everything from his underpants to his t-shirt is dodgy.