In January, during the MLS off-season, Liam Ridgewell, the Portland Timbers captain, gave an interview to the Independent and said that the weather and travel are the biggest challenges in the MLS, where the quality of football “is like the [English] Championship”.

“You get such a mix,” Ridgewell said. “You get to play against New York City and against Pirlo, Villa and Lampard, and you will play another team that haven’t got all those designated players and you are playing a different game.”

Ridgewell’s comments were brought to mind on Tuesday, when ESPN published its annual player poll. ESPN asked 123 current MLS players – who remained anonymous – a series of questions about the league, about salary and scheduling and so on, and finished with this delightfully provocative inquiry: where would the best MLS team finish in the Premier League this season?

The results were at once predictable and surprising. None of the 123 thought they’d finish in the top four. But 17% thought they’d finish between fifth and ninth, 50% said between 10th and 14th, and 33% between 15th and last. Which we can extrapolate to say: two-thirds of current MLS players believe the top team in the USA would finish between fifth and 14th in the Premier League.

A couple of players shared their reasoning. Player A was happy to toe the party line: “Sixth. Guys would play in that league and figure it out. I think guys in this league are a lot better than people give them credit for.”

Player B, on the other hand, was more damning; a renegade among a slew of yes men. “Relegated,” he sniffed. “The best MLS team would get relegated every year in the Premier League. An MLS All-Star team would fight to [survive] in the bottom half.”

The outrage on social media was swift and predictable – although it’s worth noting many of MLS’s critics in Europe will have watched many of the league’s games live.

Two points to consider. The respondents were current MLS players. Despite the cloak of anonymity, it might be considered poor form to do down your own league. The prospect of 100% of respondents suggesting the league’s best team would finish rock bottom might seem a touch gauche.

Plus, an abundance of the players surveyed have never played in Europe. They’ve no first-hand experience of how the football is. Unlike Ridgewell, their perceptions come from television or a trip to England to take in a Premier League game. The inflated numbers may well come from naiveté rather than arrogance.

What we can say is: the best of MLS is pretty decent, and getting better. Toronto’s Sebastian Giovinco is the league’s best player, and he’s a genuine star – it’s a real coup for the league that the Italian would come to play in North America in his prime. He would definitely get a game at Stoke; he’d undoubtedly make Everton stronger. Drogba, Gerrard, Lampard, Kaká and Pirlo are obviously past their best, but they were genuine superstars; it’s not even a year ago that Pirlo was playing in the Champions League final.

Diego Valeri and Ignacio Piatti are clever Argentinian No10s, with a pedigree in South America, and Michael Bradley did well in Serie A and the Bundesliga. Robbie Keane continues to excel for LA Galaxy, Giovani dos Santos didn’t do too much at Spurs but found his feet in Spain, Fabian Castillo is a fine young prospect with Colombian international experience. Clint Dempsey was effective for Fulham. Each of them would not be out of place in the Premier League.

On the other hand, Altidore was a disastrous flop at Sunderland but scores pretty freely for Toronto. Bradley Wright-Phillips scored occasional goals in the second and third tier in England – and then went to MLS and became a showstopper. Kei Kamara enjoyed few precious moments at Norwich and Middlesbrough; now he’s the league’s dominant No9. Giles Barnes and Tyrone Mears swapped unremarkable British clubs to be go-to guys for Houston and Seattle.

Some MLS games can be terrible, no doubt. Chicago and Philadelphia struggled badly last season, and watching them can be a trial. But then MLS throws up challenges UK teams don’t have to face. Long travel, for example: San Jose Earthquakes can’t take the team bus up the road for a lunchtime kickoff. They have to fly everywhere – and MLS limits the number of charter flights a team can take, to prevent wealthier teams gaining an unfair advantage. Away from fixtures such as the New York derby, teams don’t enjoy away support, either – the journeys for fans are just too long. When away teams score in a packed stadium, you can usually hear a pin drop.

As you might expect from a league that’s barely 20 years old, the quality between the best players and the rest is marked; it’s rare to find any one team stocked with 11 quality stars. Galaxy are the closest, probably, and Ashley Cole, Nigel de Jong, Jelle van Damme, Giovani, Keane, Gerrard and Gyasi Zardes represent something near to MLS’s best team – at least on paper – although an MLS all-star team might fare better than an individual club. Having said that, Portland and Columbus – teams without huge star names – reached the final last year. Organisation, hard work and team spirit seems to count for much.

For what it’s worth, Gerrard said he was “surprised” by the quality of MLS when he arrived from Liverpool last year. “I think the level is very good,” he said in August. “The level’s a lot stronger than people’s opinions’ suggested before.” True, he’s not going to insult his new employers, but he warned of dismissing it as a retirement league. “A lot of people talk about the MLS, about the level, but for me a lot of them are wrong,” he said. “[When] you come here and sample it yourself, you see how strong it is and how fit and professional the players are.”

So how would MLS’s best team do in the Premier League? It’s almost an impossible question to answer. Sixth is too high, but maybe they’d do enough to stay up. For the sake of argument, let’s say LA Galaxy – with players with experience in Europe – are the team best equipped to survive in the Premier League. Could Robbie Keane and Giovani breach the defences of Sunderland and Aston Villa? Would Gerrard and De Jong dominate in midfield against Norwich and Bournemouth and Palace? To be sure, Chicago, who finished 20th last season, would plummet. But Galaxy – or a team who operate together well as a unit such as FC Dallas or Columbus Crew – might have the quality to keep their head above water ... just.