Gareth Barry’s fourth appearance for West Bromwich Albion is a big one.
The Hawthorns is just about the only place where Barry is the new guy, as the 36-year-old midfielder is making his 632nd Premier League appearance with a start versus West Ham United on Saturday.
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Oddly enough, Barry’s played more matches against Giggs (27) then he had against any other player besides Wayne Rooney (28). Frank Lampard, Jermain Defoe, and Michael Carrick have also played 27 times against Barry.
Those are mostly unhappy times for Barry, whose teams lost 21 of those encounters, only winning four times.
Some other stats:
-- Giggs drops down the list when it’s limited to PL-only matches (22). In this case, Defoe’s 27 tops the chart.
-- The first came with Aston Villa on May 2, 1998, a 41-minute run-out in a 3-1 win at Sheffield Wednesday.
-- The next one was a start, and 365 of the 632 came for Villa. He scored 41 goals in that 11-year senior tenure.
-- In 2009, Barry moved to Man City. He’d make his next 132 PL matches there, scoring six times.
-- Barry left City on loan in 2013-14, heading to Everton. Thirty-two PL appearances came during the loan, with another 99 after he permanently joined the Toffees.
-- West Brom bought Barry for an undisclosed fee in August, after the midfielder had pitched in during a pair of Europa League qualifiers for Everton.
Also:
600 - Barry will also become the first player to start 600 games in the Premier League. Milestone. https://t.co/YbtBsadxTP
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) September 16, 2017