The results are in: “Forget Messi and Ronaldo – who’s the next best player in the world?”

Following the release of the Ballon d'Or nominations earlier this week, we asked a very simple question...

"Imagine an alien race arrived on our planet and their first act was to accidentally vaporise both Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi - who would you tell them was the best footballer on earth?" Thankfully, no vaporising has occurred (yet), but it looks like we have our answer after thousands of you got back to us with your suggestions and the reasons. Here's how it went down...

After asking the question on Facebook, we realised we'd forgotten someone...

https://twitter.com/mistermistry/status/656479468563906560

And some of you pointed out other 'elite' (cough) players we missed...

https://twitter.com/usasoccerguy/status/656478731062636544

Joe Allen, you say?

https://twitter.com/JOE_co_uk/status/654707991359320066

Finally, we got down to serious business...

Depay?!?! We said serious business.

A trend soon started to emerge...

https://twitter.com/LFCAmbrose/status/656480330417897472

And while there were occasional shouts for other players...

https://twitter.com/randallbell/status/656479116951207936

It was clear most of you would put Suarez or Neymar just behind the vaporised Messi and Ronaldo...

Not if this lot have anything to say about it, Jacob...

In the end, Adam perfectly summed up the feelings of most of you...

So there we have it, if Messi and Ronaldo were vaporised by aliens today, we'd probably all agree that Suarez is the best remaining player on the planet. But Neymar would pinch his crown in the next couple of years.

We're glad that's finally decided and you're all happy. Oh...