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It was a season that begun with some questioning whether Erling Haaland would be able to adapt to Pep Guardiola. It’s a season that’s ended with the Norwegian sweeping just about every award going.
So when the email pinged across the FFT office to nominate the End of Season award winners, it felt important to ask our trusty staff to consider footballers who aren’t Scandinavian goal machines on the cusp of winning a Treble.
Naturally, City dominate here. But a few others have had campaigns of note…
FourFourTwo’s End of Season Awards: Player of the Season
James Andrew, Editor (@JamesAndrew_): Erling Haaland It is hard to pick anyone else. His first season in England has been simply sensational. He is on course to break every personal goalscoring record going in the Premier League era and could help Manchester City win a historic treble. If he does then he has to be a shoo-in for the Ballon d’Or, and yes I am aware Lionel Messi won the World Cup in the same period.
Matthew Ketchell, Deputy Editor (@Ketchell): I mean, it has to be him who scored all those goals, right? But take the Scandinavian goal alien out of the equation, and I’d pick the Scandinavian goal magician, Martin Odegaard. So intelligent, technical, calm and composed all season. Developing into a proper leader too which I didn’t see coming.
Conor Pope, Online Editor (@Conorpope): It’s Erling Haaland. Next.
Adam Clery, Head of Video (@AdamClery): Everyone else is saying Erling Haaland, aren’t they? Well, I mean, they’re right, but let me make the case for a deliberately contrarian pick… Kevin De Bruyne.
Goals win games, absolutely, but consistent brilliance across the season is what potentially wins you a treble. Two facts I baselessly believe here; 1) I genuinely think the even I (wrong side of 30, no knees, bad heart) could have gotten into double figures for City this season, and 2) without KDB orchestrating things the Norwegian Thanos would be posting Shaun Goater numbers. Think back to him being in and out of the side in the early part of the season. This was, we now know, Pep trying to make sure he wasn’t burned out when the long, long, final-stretch to silverware arrived. He’s been at the heart of their revolutionary change in system, playing deep in the midfield, right in the mixer, and even directly up-front on occasion. I don’t think there’s another player in the world who could have done what he’s done this season.
Ryan Dabbs, Staff Writer (@RyanDabbs_): Perhaps surprising, considering the season Haaland has had, but I’m going for Harry Kane. The Spurs striker has scored 28 goals in an ailing team and no one seems to have noticed. Attacking-wise, Tottenham have been woeful. Richarlison, Son and Kulusevski have all been poor, while the midfield is defensive and offers little in the way of creating chances, leaving Kane to turn provider and scorer for himself. Haaland’s got De Bruyne, Silva, Gundogan, Grealish, Mahrez and Foden all assisting him – who has Kane got?
Mark White, Staff Writer (@markwhlte): Erling Haaland is spectacular… but I feel like credit needs to be given to Ilkay Gundogan this season. Once again he’s popped up with key goals in the run-in, been the metronome in midfield and is as important as anyone else in that City side, Erling included. One of the most intelligent midfielders we’ve seen in the Premier League.
Manager of the Season
James Andrew: It would be easy to look at the number of sackings this season and think that there have not been many/any decent managerial performances. But that is far from the case. Pep Guardiola has again taken his Manchester City side to new levels this season. Mikel Arteta has taken Arsenal from outside the top four to being serious title challengers. But below the top two, Eddie Howe, Erik Ten Hag, Roberto De Zerbi, Unai Emery, Thomas Frank, Marco Silva, Julen Lopetegui and even Roy Hodgson would be a worthy winner of manager of the season
However, my pick goes to Gary O’Neil at Bournemouth. O’Neil took over from Scott Parker after the 9-0 defeat by Liverpool and there would not have been many people who give the Cherries a chance of staying up. And even when O’Neil took charge things did not start to look up until April when they won five games in the month to take them away from the bottom three and keep them up with games to spare.
Matthew Ketchell: To take what Steve Bruce and Mike Ashley left him, and turn the majority of them into a Champions League-chasing team after one pre-season is utterly remarkable from Eddie Howe. Pragmatic signings off the pitch and total composure in the white heat of a Premier League technical area. He is edging towards world-class manager territory.
Conor Pope: Brighton’s ninth-place under Graham Potter last year was the club’s best-ever league finish. When Potter left, Roberto De Zerbi was a surprise choice – his CV bears a slew of small Italian sides, plus a spell at Shakhtar Donetsk cut short by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It seemed unlikely he would be able to replicate Potter’s success, let alone better it, while making the Seagulls one of the best teams to watch in the Premier League.
Adam Clery: Edward John Frank Howe. Or “Eddie”, as his mother calls him. While Pep and Arteta have elevated two of the league’s best teams to levels they feel they should always be at anyway, in taking Newcastle to the *Actual Champions League*, he’s done something you’d have rightly considered impossible. He’s spent less money than West Ham and Nottingham Forest this season and made top-four players out of Jacob Murphy, Sean Longstaff, Joelinton, Fabian Schar, and Callum Wilson. In a parallel universe, not so dissimilar to ours, all of those lads were playing in the Championship this season, and it didn’t strike anyone as particularly weird.
Ryan Dabbs: Steve Cooper. As soon as Nottingham Forest were promoted, I expected them to go straight back down, and throughout the course of the season my opinion never changed. Even at the start of May, they were certainties to finish in the bottom three, so the job Cooper has done has been incredible, not least because he’s had to contend with an influx of 20 new signings, somehow find the best starting XI from an abundance of players – just ask Tuchel, Potter and Lampard how difficult that is – and all with the constant stress of being sacked, after being given multiple, insidious “votes of confidence” by the owner. Chapeau, Cooper.
Mark White: Someone should vote for Pep Guardiola, right? We seem to have normalised his level of brilliance but it says a lot that Manchester City have been accused of breaching financial fair play rules around 100 times over a nine-year period – and yet Pep is still the biggest factor in their dominance.
Performance of the Season
James Andrew: Manchester City have been pushed all the way this season by Arsenal. But City winning the league is down to their two games against Arsenal. The importance of the two fixtures were hyped up before the games and City rose to the challenge and produced two masterclasses.
Matthew Ketchell: Newcastle again. Their 6-1 demolition of Tottenham bordered on cruelty. 5-0 up after 21 minutes? This was billed as a top-four decider as well, with Spurs just three points behind Newcastle at kick-off, but it effectively ended their season.
Conor Pope: Sheffield Wednesday’s League One play-off semi-final second leg against Peterborough was the most thrilling single match in football this season. Trailing 4-0 from the first leg, no one gave the Owls much of a chance of anything other than recovering some pride at Hillsborough.
But Wednesday went two up inside half an hour, and there was a clear sense that the players actually believed they could do it. A fourth goal in the eighth minute of stoppage time was barely believable. To then bounce back from conceding in extra time to score yet again to take the game to penalties, before scoring all five spot kicks in the shootout… it’s the kind of performance that every football fan dreams their team will deliver. Nothing beats it.
Adam Clery: Special mention to Sheffield Wednesday for somehow coming back from 0-4 down in the 98th minute, only to concede an own goal in extra-time, pull it back again, and then win on penalties. But that’s a performance that frankly pales in comparison to that of Prime Minister and Multi-Millionaire-Man-Of-The-People Rishi Sunak pretending to like football by recording a good luck message for Stockton Town earlier in the season. Good luck, The Achors! Do a goal! I’m just like you! Honest!
This is one of the most painful things I’ve ever watched pic.twitter.com/4H0xbR9aPHApril 29, 2023
Ryan Dabbs: Does Cristiano Ronaldo’s interview with Piers Morgan count? Yes? Good.
Mark White: It’s a distant memory now but Brentford’s 4-0 first half against Manchester United at home in August might be the most perfectly-executed half of football that the Bees have mustered in the Premier League thus far. What a way to prove you’re not going to succumb to second-season syndrome.
Disasterclass of the Season, in association with Ali Dia
James Andrew: VAR. Saying VAR is a bit of a cop-out, we saw from the World Cup that VAR can work well. The problem is it is not being used well in the Premier League. Referee chief Howard Webb seems to be apologising a lot for mistakes – mainly to Brighton. But the frustrating thing from the fans point of view is a lot of the mistakes are as a result of human error – the very thing VAR was brought in to eradicate.
Matthew Ketchell: Leeds 1-5 Crystal Palace. A game Leeds really could’ve done with winning. I have a lot of time for Leeds fans, and their club, but the current side are one of the most brittle teams I’ve ever seen in the league. They’ve simply melted in certain games this season.
Conor Pope: Take your pick from the entirety of Chelsea’s January and February, in which they played 11 games, won one, and scored a grand total of four goals. It was £600 million worth of dross.
Adam Clery: In any normal sport this would be Chelsea. But amusingly there are seemingly no consequences to wasting the actual GDP of the Dominican Republic on transfers beyond a bit of embarrassment. So your winner here is Frank Lampard, somehow fumbling a seemingly untouchable reputation in the game by putting both them and Everton into actual relegation form in the same season. And yet, that’s still somehow less mortifying than being mates with James Corden.
Ryan Dabbs: Scott Parker at Bournemouth. Gary O’Neill has made him look a right fool by keeping the Cherries up, the squad deemed “not good enough” to retain Premier League status after a 9-0 loss at Liverpool. Parker lasted just a couple of months at Club Brugge, too, where he was humiliated against Benfica in the Champions League. All for saving face, eh?
Mark White: On the back of two draws, Arsenal’s home game against bottom-placed Southampton was not only a must-win to remain in the title race, it was the perfect fixture to bounce back from. Not even the Gunners’ worst performance of the season – trips to Everton and Forest were limper – and yet the eery silence at full-time was like nothing I’d ever heard before at the Emirates Stadium. We all knew it was over. It’s games like that which separate champions from challengers.
Signing of the Season
James Andrew: Joao Palhinha at Fulham. The Portugal international joined newly promoted Fulham from Sporting Lisbon for £20m and instantly made them hard to beat. Palhinha has made more tackles than any other player in the Premier League (139 at time of writing) and one of the key reasons for Fulham’s place in the top 10.
Matthew Ketchell: The business of Brighton selling Marc Cucurella for around £60m and signing Pervis Estupinan for less than a third of that figure has been brilliant.
Conor Pope: Napoli buying Kim Min-jae from Fenerbahce for around £16m. The South Korean came in as a replacement for Kalidou Koulibaly, who had become one of Europe’s most lauded defenders during his eight years in Italy, so had big boots to fill. Kim had impressed during his one season at Fenerbahce, but his year in Serie A has been incredible, and deservedly ends as a title winner. He’ll likely be on the move again this summer, but his value will have skyrocketed.
Adam Clery: If Arsenal had somehow gone on to win the league then William Saliba might well have this tag for the entire rest of his career but, again, the correct answer here is Erling High-Caffine-Energy-Drink-Can-With-Legs Haaland.
In second place though is Me, for FourFourTwo. Check out our YouTube channel for brand-new videos every single day.
Ryan Dabbs: Right, I’ll vote for him now. Manchester City signing Erling Haaland has been nothing short of unfair on the rest of the Premier League, with arguably the world’s best manager adding a superhuman goalscorer to an already refined side. Costing £85.5m in total is also a snip, relatively speaking, for someone who has broken the Premier League single-season scoring record.
Mark White: The stats state that goalkeepers in this year’s relegation battle have been particularly poor. The eye test shows that Gavin Bazunu and Ilian Meslier have been out of their depth: post-shot expected goals data shows they’ve let in 16 and 12 goals respectively that they should’ve stopped, while Danny Ward and Dean Henderson are on negative figures five and four respectively, too. Not only is Bournemouth’s Neto one of the few at the bottom with a positive record in that respect, he’s taken the captaincy this season from Lloyd Kelly to affirm his influence behind the scenes. A signing almost as good in both performance and leadership as FourFourTwo’s Adam Clery.
Prediction for next season
James Andrew: Next season could be one of the most exciting seasons for a long time. Manchester City and Arsenal will still be up there but could be joined in a legitimate six-way title race by Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester United, Tottenham and Newcastle. And then there are the other teams below that like Brighton, Aston Villa and Wolves who all have ambitious managers who will want to push their sides further and look for domestic silverware and European qualification.
Matthew Ketchell: Chelsea to mount a title challenge. They bounced back viciously after that disastrous Mourinho season in 2015/16 and won the league under Conte. There’s a potentially dangerous team there if Pochettino can get things going with that squad like we know he can.
Conor Pope: This season saw a record 14 managerial sackings in the Premier League. With so many clubs in transition, next year will look a lot more like 2020/21, when just four gaffers got the chop.
Adam Clery: Money! Simply insane levels of frivolity and carelessness with money! Aston Villa, Brighton, and Newcastle have all put the willies up the established ‘Big Six’ at a time when most of them are due a major squad rebuild. Expect Liverpool to move mountains on a whole new midfield, Man United to invest nine figures in a single centre-forward, and Chelsea’s Random-Transfer-Generator to somehow grossly overvalue a player who’s had, at best, one eye-catching season in Serie A.
Ryan Dabbs: This could seriously come back to bite me, but I think there’s a real possibility Arsenal could finish outside of the Champions League places next season. Newcastle United and Manchester United are continuously improving, Liverpool will surely be a lot better than this season, and Chelsea should manage to compete again as their squad gels over the summer. Arsenal’s squad depth isn’t great, and with Champions League football and their fans expecting the club to compete in both domestic cups, they could fall by the wayside a little.
Mark White: Newcastle United have a European semi-final in them. They have a world-class manager, a high-octane style of play, a cauldron-like atmosphere and genuine game-changers across their side. I think they’ll surprise a few in the Champions League.
