These men just couldn’t stay away…

In the biblical tale of the Prodigal Son, a young man ventures to the big city to fill up on wine and hookers before going home to lead a normal domestic life as an accountant, or something. In some ways, it’s exactly the same tale as that of Shaun Wright-Phillips and Manchester City, only without the fatted calf, the hookers, the wine… the bible. But no matter.

This, along with Heskey’s suspected return to Liverpool, got The Spoiler to thinking, and by the time we’d polished off our lunchtime amuse bouche followed by soup, we’d pretty much compiled a team made up of returning players. All with varying degrees of success.

In goal, we went for everyone’s favourite drug-eating maniac, Mark Bosnich. He had two stints with Man United (1989-1992, 1999-2001), pretty much messing up both times. Always full of potential, he scraped just three games during the first stint, then was left playing second fiddle to the crown prince of stupidness, Barthez, the second time.

In defence are Henning Berg (Blackburn Rovers 1993-1997, 2000-2003), handsome Martin Keown (Arsenal 1984-1986, 1993-2004), Des Walker (Nottingham Forest 1984-1992, 2002-2004) and Chris Powell (Charlton 1998-2004, 2007-2008). All four would walk into any Graham Taylor team.

The midfield includes zippy little Shaun Wright-Phillips (Man City 1999-2005, 2008-), zippy little Juninho (Middlesbrough 1995-1997, 2002-2004), zippy little Solano (Newcastle 1998-2004, 2005-2007), and, um, Vinnie Jones (Wimbledon 1986-1989, 1992-1998).

And up front, we could have gone for Ian Rush, Mark Hughes, lots of other people. But we plumped for Peter Beardsley (Newcastle 1983-1987, 1993-1997) and Robbie Fowler (Liverpool 1993-2001, 2006-2007) simply because both were totally brilliant. But it was close.

Can you think of anyone we’ve missed out? Let us know with a comment.