Steven Gerrard answered instantly when asked to name the best midfielder he played alongside

Steven Gerrard would be the player many of his former teammates would name as the best they've played alongside, but who gets the nod from the man himself?

Liverpool legend Gerrard played with more than a few high-quality midfield partners for the Reds and England.

Gerrard played more games with Dietmar Hamann than any other midfielder and also counts Lucas Leiva and Danny Murphy among his club colleagues in the middle of the park.

He famously played with Frank Lampard for England despite constant debate about whether they could play together. David Beckham, Paul Scholes and Michael Carrick all joined Gerrard in midfield on international duty.

Joe Cole also played with Gerrard for club and country, albeit in a more advanced position, and Gerrard rated him extremely highly.

But it's the player next on the list of Liverpool team-mates after Hamann, Lucas and Murphy in terms of shared matches who Gerrard named as the best he played alongside.

Gerrard and Xabi Alonso played together 165 times for Liverpool, winning the Champions League in 2004-05, and the former Reds captain named Alonso as his greatest midfield colleague.

In a 2015 column for the Daily Mail, Gerrard was effusive in his admiration for the Spaniard, who is now the manager of defending Bundesliga champions Bayer Leverkusen.

"It was clear Alonso was royalty after our first training session together in August 2004, and Rafa Benitez, who had been so clever to buy him in the first place, was equally stupid to sell him to Real Madrid five years later," said Gerrard.

"He was, by some distance, the best central midfielder I ever played alongside."

Alonso added the FA Cup to his successes at Anfield but was sold to Real Madrid in 2009.

Xabi Alonso (Image: Getty)

"It was a disastrous decision to sell Alonso, and especially for just £30 million – which looks a snip now when you reflect on all he has achieved subsequently, both at Real Madrid and Bayern Munich and with Spain, winning the Euros and the World Cup," added Gerrard.

"I blame Rafa entirely for the loss of Alonso. He could still have been playing for Liverpool six or seven years after he left in 2009.

"I think more about the special players we lost – Alonso, [Fernando] Torres and [Luis] Suarez – than the terrible signings with which we got lumbered."

Gerrard played more than 500 times in the Premier League before a brief spell in Major League Soccer with LA Galaxy and a move into coaching, first with Liverpool's youth ranks and then as the manager of Rangers, Aston Villa and Al-Ettifaq.