The Professional Footballers’ Association released its Team of the Year on Sunday, an XI full of top-end talent. The question: could we put together a team to rival a unit that rolls out Petr Cech, Gary Cahill, Luke Shaw, Vincent Kompany, Seamus Coleman, Steven Gerrard, Adam Lallana, Yaya Toure, Eden Hazard, player of the year Luis Suarez and Daniel Sturridge?
Well you know we’re going to try…
Goalkeeper: Loads of respect to Cech, but there have been plenty of brilliant keepers in the Premier League this year that could’ve been named to the post. Bad teams don’t get love in these award team, so we can dismiss Sunderland’s Vito Mannone, who has been strong for a bad, bad Black Cats team. I also think Asmir Begovic of Stoke might be the best keeper in the league, but a Potters player would be a bit of a headscratcher, no? Let’s stick top of the table: Tim Howard (Everton) and Wojciech Sczezsny (Arsenal). I won’t let any American bias make this decision for me, so we’ll defer to the mighty Squawka scores and crown the Gunners keeper as our No. 1. To be fair to Cech, he was heads and tails above the competition from New Year’s Day onward.
Defenders: Plenty of room for consternation here, as British buzz dominates the PFA’s team. We’ll start there, too, plugging in diminutive defender Leighton Baines of Everton. After that we’ll go decidedly “off the island,” with Arsenal’s “BFG” Per Mertesacker next to nail-eating Liverpool center back Martin Skrtel. The latter was strong in the air and toward the goal for the Reds, bagging a pair of braces in the new year. If we’re looking for a true team we need to leave out Hull’s strong English center back Curtis Davies, Cardiff City’s Steven Caulker and Arsenal’s Laurent Koscielny. We’ll go with Serbian star Branislav Ivanovic of Chelsea.
Midfielders: So. many. choices. We’ll start with crafty Frenchman Samir Nasri of Manchester City. I choose Nasri over David Silva mainly because the latter only appeared in 24 matches (Silva was one of only two midfielders to have a higher possession Squawka score than Nasri). I left out Michael Carrick for injury reasons as well; You could argue his absence hurt Manchester United as much as any other player (You’d be wrong: it was RVP. But I digress). We’ll take a serious look at Jordan Henderson of Liverpool despite his awful tackle in the final moments against City; the former Sunderland player has been a revelation. I’m going to wave back to my “have to be top of table” comments here — especially with the liberty I’m taking at forward — as Mile Jedinak of Crystal Palace has been an absolutely fantastic defensive midfielder in the Eagles resurgence. We’ll plug Everton’s Kevin Mirallas on the right side. As for the left, it’s a bit of a beggar’s spot but I’ve loved Christian Eriksen of Spurs. His crosses are marvelous.
Forwards: This is a team of the year, which unfortunately precludes us from choosing the super dangerous Sergio Aguero of Manchester City. If you were to head back to December and tell the world he wouldn’t be in the team of the year, it’d be shocking. I suppose we have to be honest and call Wayne Rooney a striker despite his box-to-box play, so he gets one of our bids. That leaves a real struggle for me: Swansea City’s Wilfried Bony, Everton’s Romelu Lukaku and Southampton’s Rickie Lambert and Jay Rodriguez each did a job for the teams. Frankly, I love the year Bony had a bit under the radar at Swansea, with not a heck of a lot of quality balls getting to him. And he didn’t build up his 15 goals against chumps alone; Bony scored at Arsenal, at Everton, at Liverpool and in Europe. He also bested City twice at home. Not bad.
PST’s “Second-Choice” Team of the Year
GK: Wojciech Sczezsny, Arsenal
LB: Leighton Baines, Everton
CB: Per Mertesacker, Arsenal
CB: Martin Skrtel, Liverpool
RB: Branislav Ivanovic, Chelsea
LM: Christian Eriksen, Tottenham
CM: Jordan Henderson, Liverpool
CM: Samir Nasri, Manchester City
RM: Kevin Mirallas, Everton
ST: Wayne Rooney, Manchester United
ST: Wilfried Bony, Swansea City