The nominees for the 2012/13 PFA Player of The Year are Gareth Bale, Robin Van Persie, Luis Suarez, Eden Hazard, Juan Mata and Michael Carrick. Its hard to get too worked up about these type of awards but considering these nominations will be consigned to posterity as a reminder of who were the best players of the 2012/3 season, they are worthy of some debate.
Its relatively easy to propose a player who was hard done by without nominating who should have left off in his place, so with that in mind, we view Bale, Van Persie, Suarez and Mata as rock solid candidates for nomination. Mata has probably been the least dominant of the four but with ten league goals and 14 assists added to his general excellence, he's very much a deserving nominee.
The two most debatable ones are Michael Carrick and Eden Hazard. Carrick has won four Premier League and a Champion's League medal at United but he is still an oft criticised player, with many fans and analysts like John Giles taking him to task mainly for being unwilling to take the ball under pressure and for passing sideways too readily. The latter criticism could not leveled at him this season with Whoscored.com finding he has 129 more forward passes than any other player in the Premier League. In our opinion, Carrick has had his best year at United and is a worthy nominee, narrowly edging out Michu, Santi Cazorla and Leighton Baines.
Eden Hazard is more fortunate to be nominated having started the season brilliantly with 2 goals and 9 assists with his first nine games but his performances have dropped off after that, which is understandable for a player in his first season in England but still leaves him a bit short of this standard for this award.
In place of Hazard we would nominate Steven Gerrard. Gerrard has been excellent after being dogged by injury for the previous two seasons. With Joe Allen ineffective, he has played a lot as a genuine central midfield player, a position that he hasn't been as suited to in the past, but has risen to the task, showing more restraint in playing 'Hollywood balls' and curtailing some of his forward runs. That added to his always excellent creative passing and forward bursts have made this one of Gerrard's best seasons in years.
(Stats via whoscored and premierleague.com)
