Ryan Giggs and Ashley Young win PFA Awards
PFA Players of the Year (2009)
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).
Guess footballers don’t like Stephen Ireland
There’s no right or wrong in this really. It’s a democratic vote by the players so how we can question it?
That said, I think they got it wrong! While Giggsy deserves every accolade and superlative as a player and as a professional and ticks every box in terms of what you would want in a player/individual, the truth is that this award is for the best player of the season and with 12 league starts how can you be a genuine contender?
It was a nostalgic vote but I must say it somewhat restores my faith in the humanity of this overpaid, bently driving, inarticulate bunch of egomaniacs that, as a collective, they made this choice.
Timing of course is everything. When Giggsy scored that suberb individual goal to win the game at West Ham on Feb 6th the press went into superlatives, revisiting Giggsy’s contribution to the game and ruing the fact that he had never won the Player of the Year Award.
At a time when most were voting his fellow professionals obviously took note.
I agree that the vote should be in May and cover the whole season.
I think Vidic should have won it. How often does it go to a defender and he has had an outstanding season. He’ll probably never get another shot at it so let’s remember that Giggsy’s gain is potentially Vidic’s loss.
Lampard would also have been in there in my vote. Anelka definitely not. If it was voted in May Rooney would be a definite contender and Evra could have missed out. Also, considering that the vote was pre Liverpool’s ‘purple patch’ I’m not sure how Torres made it in based on the number of games played and goals scored to that point.
We’ll all have our opinions but in the end its the democratic vote of the Pros that decides and in that context there’s no right or wrong!
Personally I would have given the award to Vidic.
Giggs may not have been the best player of this season but he has played superbly well whenever he’s been called upon.
It only shows how much his peers,not only from Man U,but from the other BPL teams respect him.
wheres jermaine beckford for league 1,the guys been awesome.
Giggs winning this award is a disgrace and devalues the honour entirely as far as I’m concerned.
Team of the season:
Chris Kirkland; Phil Jagielka, Rio Ferdindand, Nemanja Vidic, Glen Johnson; Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Stephen Ireland, Gareth Barry; Tim Cahill, Fernando Torres. Or I might swap Kevin Davies in for Cahill, but I’m biased on that front.
Giggs winning is laughable.