Costa, Keane, Vieira: Premier League's hardest ever XI

Batten down the hatches, folks, Diego Costa is on his way back to the Premier League.

The former Chelsea hitman looks set to complete a sensational move to Wolves as he aims for one last dance in the English top-flight.

Just when you thought the summer had given everything it has to give, the transfer merry-go-round coughs up one of the most unexpected moves of the season.

The no-nonsense, all-action Spaniard spent most of his initial English spell in a huff, never far from a tantrum and always in the headlines for some sort of controversy.

However, his brand of football worked a treat as he caused many a nightmare for Premier League defenders.

But where does he fit in the pantheon of the Premier League’s supposed ‘hard men’? Well, he certainly makes the starting line-up.

GK: Peter Schmeichel

It just had to be, right?

After leaving the king of the hard-men, Roy Keane, with a finger bent in all the wrong directions after a fight at Manchester United – to name but one incident – Schmeichel was the obvious pick

RB: Julian Dicks

We may have ‘The Terminator’ playing on the wrong side of the defence, but we just had to find a way to include him.

Dicks simply loved a brutal challenge but, when he wasn’t ploughing through his opponents, he was also famous for some of the most thunderous penalties you could ever hope to see.

CB: Jaap Stam

Need we say more? The simple fact of the matter is, when Stam made a tackle, the opposing player knew about it for weeks after.

Just ask Olly Murs…

CB: Neil Ruddock

“Basically, I loved kicking Andrew Cole,” Ruddock explained in comments that he later apologised for. “I know this is not big or clever but in one tackle I broke both his legs, because he annoyed me.”

There’s a reason they called