Something Great

Arsene Wenger cobbled together starting lineups with spit and duct tape and Denilson and somehow the team dragged its ass over the finish line in third or fourth.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Good Timing

In case you hadn't seen it already, here is the list of players who made the Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) Team of the Year

PFA Premier League Team of the Year:
David James (Portsmouth)
Bacary Sagna (Arsenal)
Rio Ferdinand (Man Utd)
Nemanja Vidic (Man Utd)
Gael Clichy (Arsenal)
Steven Gerrard (Liverpool)
Cesc Fabregas (Arsenal)
Cristiano Ronaldo (Man Utd)
Ashley Young (Aston Villa)
Emmanuel Adebayor (Arsenal)
Fernando Torres (Liverpool)

Some thoughts - Notice how no Chelsea players made it and both my favs Clichy (take that Jim) and Sagna did. This could end up being a little bit odd for Chelsea if they win the Premiership and none of their guys would start on the all-EPL team.
I was fairly alarmed when I saw Plaxico Burress on the list. Rest assured though that Ade is back to his old self after his mid-season transformation into the Randy Moss of the Premier League. He had Jim and I pretty excited and the phrase, "next level" was used at least 30 times in every one of our conversations. Now we sigh that many times.

Does anyone else find it a tad awkward that Fabregas (20) won the "Young" player award and Cristiano (23) won the POY award. Is 23 old? Is Cristi not allowed to win both awards? Props for Fab anyway.

4 comments:

Jim said...

Cesc's award, while certainly deserved, was a consolation prize. Obviously Ronaldo should have won both (as he did last year). But since Arsenal will be walking away with naught this year, I guess his fellow players felt Cesc ought to get something out of the season.

Come on Juan, you know I love the Hurricane. I just couldn't do it when I thought about his mistakes against Citeh and Birmingham. Evra didn't do (hasn't done) that. Clich is superior in every other respect, though.

If you go by goalscoring record alone, Ade deserves his place, but you and I both know that a more efficient striker playing the role he did and receiving the balls he consistently got from Cesc, Hleb, Flam, and co. puts away 30 league goals. Easy. (Which is irksome, to say the least.)

Ben said...

I have to agree with Jim. First, Cesc clearly got the consolation prize. Second, if you put a more refined goal scorer in Ade's place, you'd see the different results. With that said, he clearly played fantastic, and hopefully has stuff to build on.

Now onto this afternoon's match where I need to RVP to score a hattie for fantasy.

Jim said...

Well... maybe Ade belongs on the team after all. I forgot that he still hadn't played against Derby and Sunderland a second time.

Anonymous said...

I e-mailed Ben today after watching yesterday's ManU-Barca UCL tie. I only caught the second half, but I saw Ronaldo go down untouched twice, including once in the box when there wasn't another player within a yard of him. Granted Ronaldo is the most-skilled player in the EPL and has played lights out this season, I wish that voters would take account of his absurdly childish behavior. He twice yelled at Zambrotta for "diving" after he pulled him down. All that being said, I am definitely biased. Let me know what you think. Long live the Gooners!