Manchester United’s Ryan Giggs has won the Professional Footballers’ Association Player of the Year award for the first time in his career, while Ashley Young takes the PFA Young Player of the Year award.
As we’ve discussed earlier and it has been discussed on various forums (culminating in that email exchange between Gordon Taylor and a fan), the short list and eventual winners are based on voting done by the players themselves during February and March.
The PFA say that the award is timed this way to avoid clashing with the Football Writers’ Award, which is a polite way of saying that they want this award to have some meaning even when though players’ judging each other is a bit like a doing a popularity poll and as such isn’t an accurate estimate of the quality of the final selections.
Nevertheless, this voting is done by the players, and it’s done before the final stages of the season. Personally I would have given the PFA award to Frank Lampard (and he’d have gotten in the team of the year ahead of both Giggs and Anelka), and if we are to consider the whole season both Ronaldo and Gerrard, not to mention Young and Ireland, are worthy contenders as well.
Premier League team of the year: Edwin Van der Sar (Manchester United), Glen Johnson (Portsmouth), Rio Ferdinand (Manchester United), Nemanja Vidic (Manchester United), Patrice Evra (Manchester United), Ashley Young (Aston Villa), Steven Gerrard (Liverpool), Ryan Giggs (Manchester United), Cristiano Ronaldo (Manchester United), Nicolas Anelka (Chelsea), Fernando Torres (Liverpool)
Championship team: Keiren Westwood (Coventry), Kyle Naughton (Sheff Utd), Roger Johnson (Cardiff), Richard Stearman (Wolves), Daniel Fox (Coventry), Michael Kightly (Wolves), Stephen Hunt (Reading), Joe Ledley (Cardiff), Jordi Gomez (Swansea, on loan from RCD Espanyol), Sylvan Ebanks-Blake (Wolves), Jason Scotland (Swansea).
League One team: Joe Murphy (Scunthorpe), Neal Eardley (Oldham), Jack Hobbs (Leicester), Sean O’Hanlon, Dean Lewington (both MK Dons), Fabian Delph (Leeds), Matt Oakley (Leicester), Chris Taylor (Oldham), George Boyd (Peterborough), Rickie Lambert (Bristol Rovers), Matt Fryatt (Leicester).
League Two team: Scott Shearer (Wycombe), Neil Austin (Darlington), Simon King (Gillingham), David McCracken (Wycombe), Tom Kennedy (Rochdale), Omar Daley (Bradford), Dany N’Guessan (Lincoln), Ben Davies (Shrewsbury), Tommy Doherty (Wycombe), Andy Bishop (Bury), Grant Holt (Shrewsbury).
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