Maybe a Man United player will win player of the year?

By: Rob | April 14th, 2009

A little bit of manly love The nominations for the PFA footballer of the year are out, and the shortlist (of six) contains five Manchester United players, as well as Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard. I wonder who the players think the best team of the season has been?

The young footballer of the year nominations are also out, and they feature two United players, Jonny Evans and Rafael Da Silva. They’ll be going up against Steven Ireland, Gabriel Agbonlahor, Ashley Young, and Aaron Lennon.

The winners and stuff are announced at a ceremony next month. I know that the nominations were done a little while ago, but that’s rather suggestive, suggestive that no-one really thought Liverpool were going to get back into this title race.

The United players up for the main prize, are current holder Cristiano Ronaldo (currently joint top scorer in the Prem with Nic Anelka), keeper Edwin van der Saar, back pairing Vidic and Ferdinand, and Ryan Giggs.

Its a rather unsurprising selection. The back three have been voted in on the back of that incredible run of not conceeding any goals, Ryan Giggs has rolled back the years admirably, and Ronaldo is scoring goals like no-one’s business.

I’m not convinced it should be so United-centric though. Its always nice to see a keeper in these things as they rarely get the credit they deserve, but has VDS been that good this season? He started the season somewhat shakily, and alot of that golden run can surely be put down to the two fellas stood in front of him.

Giggs too, has played amazingly well for his age, but is he really in the top six Premier League players of the season? He hasn’t even completed that many games.

Liverpool are practically on United’s tail, so it would have been nice to see someone else from there get a nod, Javier Mascherano has done a very good job for them this season, for example.

Frank Lampard should also be making the list. He’s been Chelsea’s best player this season, and indeed, has scored a great many goals, which pushed them through a bad period.

Everton too have quietly been having a really good season. Fabio Capello has noticed, as in his last England squad he called up three Everton defenders. Tim Cahill has also bailed them out time after time when they didn’t have a centre-forward.

I know they’ve been nominated for the Young Player award, but I wonder how close the Villa players were – afterall, when this poll was taken, Villa looked like they were going to nick a Champions League spot.

The other thing about Young Player is I tend to forget how young these players are – Steven Ireland, Ashley Young, Agbonlahor seem so much older.

Anyway, over to you – who should have got a nod?