Candidates: A few of this season's best players.
As we head into the final match-day of the prolonged 2019-20 Premier League season, one debate that has marginalised many fans is which player is the most deserving of the PFA Player's Player of the Year award. The names of Kevin De Bruyne and Jordan Henderson have been brought up arguably the most often but others have also built up a strong case too.
A number of attributes of a player's performance have to be considered here. They can range from their individual stats, the consistency of their performances and the moments of sheer brilliance that have impacted their teams this season.
There are many players who have been terrific for their teams and have put up impressive numbers this campaign. But these are the Top 10 players that I feel have a solid case for competing for this illustrious award. In this article I will analyse the bottom 5 and in the next article; the top 5 players.
The best of the best: the ten best players this season.
10. Nick Pope
picture from The Athletic
Burnley's no.1 goalkeeper has had the season of his life so far and must be causing the England manager selection headaches as to who should start between the goalposts for the national team.
The shot-stopper has the joint-most clean sheets this season (15) and is a massive reason why Burnley head into the last game of the season looking likely to finish in the top half of the table. He also has the fourth most saves in the league (118) with only 5 more goalkeepers facing more shots than him.
He has put in multiple game-winning performances as he's managed to save 71.08% of shots he has faced so far this season and has 17 sweeper clearances. Considering the lack of high quality defenders in front of him compared to the likes of Man City and Liverpool, it can't be understated how reliable Pope has been amongst the league's goalkeepers.
9. Danny Ings
picture from Premier League.com
What a season for this man. With the injuries he has had to recover from in the last few years, it has been rather wholesome to see Ings play in all 37 games Southampton have had so far in the league. He had 7 goals in 24 games last season for the team but he has improved massively.
With a goal return of 21, only Jamie Vardy has bagged more than him in the league. Not only this but Ings is averaging a nice 130 minutes per goal and according to the Premier League's official database- he has scored 13 'big chances' that have come his way this season. Which have no doubt helped his club escape a relegation scrap this season.
Ings can say he's found himself unlucky hitting the woodwork 6 times, with no player doing so more. But as he is firmly in the race for the golden boot, he will feel he may still be able to eclipse Vardy's current goals total and round off his best individual season to date.
8. Jamie Vardy
picture from the Premier League.com
Some people may feel having the league's current top scorer this low is very harsh. But unfortunately despite Vardy's brilliant start to the season, it can't be ignored how long he had gone ineffective for.
Jamie Vardy at one point looked like he would completely run away with this season's golden boot and maybe even win the European Golden shoe award too. At the time of writing, Vardy leads the league in scoring with 23 goals in 34 games and has been instrumental in Leicester's Champions league qualification hopes. He started the season scoring goals for fun and had amazing performances against Bournemouth, Newcastle and especially Southampton when he scored a hat-trick and got an assist in a 9-0 win.
Despite this, he hasn't quite been the same striker since his team's 4-0 humbling defeat against Liverpool in December 2019. Before that game he had a phenomenal 17 goals in the first 18 game-weeks. At one point he scored in an impressive 8 consecutive matches. But after netting his 17th against Man City, he went 10 matches with no goal and just 1 assist.
He has been amongst the goals recently, scoring 4 goals in his last 5 games but the lack of consistency has hurt his chances of winning the POTS award.
7. Raheem Sterling
picture from Manchester Evening News
Another player on this list who started the season in blistering form but went on a long dry spell is Raheem Sterling. He scored a hat-trick against West Ham on the opening day of the season and was unlucky to have another ruled out for offside. It looked like Sterling was setting the tone for him to build on his excellent season from before and for a while he was.
He scored in each of the first 3 league games and had 7 goals in the first 10 games of the season.
By the end of 2019, Sterling had a fine total of 11 goals in the 19 games he had played thus far but his form took quite a U-turn afterwards. He didn't score or assist for the first 8 games of 2020 until the season was suspended due to the COVID-19 outbreak. He only started in half of these matches too.
But once football returned, he seemed to be a man on a mission. He has since scored 9 goals and assisted 4 times since the league restarted (at the time of writing) and has been amongst the deadliest players.
6. Trent Alexander-Arnold
picture from Liverpoolfc.com
Sky Sports' Jamie Carragher has likened Trent Alexander-Arnold's creativity to not being too far behind that of Kevin De Bruyne. In reality, considering Trent plays as a right-back and has put up the kind of stats he has this season, it's not that far fetched at all.
One could argue the way Alexander-Arnold plays coupled with the fact he is only 21 years old; we have not seen quite as gifted a passer and creative player at the right-back position in the modern day Premier League. He is fresh from breaking his own assist record set by a defender in a single season (13) which he himself set just last season. No other player has recorded more assists in the league over the last two seasons than Alexander-Arnold, with 25 so far.
He has been so impactful in his team's dominant title winning season and in their style of play. He had numerous standout performances this season where he recorded multiple assists in a game vs Brighton, West Ham and has scored 3 fantastic free-kicks too. He was especially outstanding against Leicester where he created 3 goals and scored superbly. He has more crosses than any other player, has taken the 5th most corners in the league and completed the 5th most passes this season.
Defensively, he has done well too with being involved in 12 clean sheets.
So this is the end of Part 1 of this list, and this list will continue in the next article published on this blog.
(Lead Image Credit: William Okafor-Oregan)
Comments
Post a Comment