PFA Player of Year shortlist announced: Jordan Henderson and Kevin de Bruyne battle for the honour
Jordan Henderson and Kevin De Bruyne will go head-to-head again after PFA revealed the six-man shortlist to be crowned their Player of the Year.
Liverpool’s captain was honoured by the FWA after leading his club’s 30-year wait to become champions, while Manchester City’s outstanding midfielder won the Premier League gong after a raft of glorious performances.
The PFA award will be won by a either a Liverpool or Manchester City player as Henderson heads four nominees from Anfield – the others are last season’s winner Virgil Van Dijk, Sadio Mane and Trent Alexander-Arnold – while De Bruyne is joined by Raheem Sterling.
Jordan Henderson and Kevin De Bruyne will do battle for the prestigious individual honour
The winner will be announced next Tuesday.
Alexander-Arnold also features in the six-man list for the Young Player of the Year award but he faces strong competition from emerging talents such as Manchester United strikers Mason Greenwood and Marcus Rashford, Chelsea pair Mason Mount and Tammy Abraham and Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka.
The criteria for the Young Player of the Year award has changed and eligible players had to be 21 or under on July 1, 2019.
Trent Alexander-Arnold and Sadio Mane are also in the reckoning, alongside Raheem Sterling
There had been doubts in the spring about whether the PFA would be able to actually crown the season’s outstanding performer and it appeared that the pandemic would mean it would be the first time since 1973 that there was a blank year.
A gala dinner, which was set to be staged in Manchester, was also cancelled after the voting process was suspended – some clubs had not received their ballot papers before they had to abandon their training complexes.
But the voting was resurrected once clubs returned to business as usual and rather than just using ballot papers, clubs could choose whether they sent email nominations or WhatsApp messages via their PFA delegate.
Current holder Virgil van Dijk is also in contention to win the award once again this year
The PFA will also honour the leading women’s footballers and Chelsea, who won the title on points per game after the 2019-20 season was curtailed, supply four nominees in Beth England, Sophie Ingle, Guro Reiten and Ji So-Yun; Arsenal supply the other two candidates in Kim Little and Vivianne Miedema.
City dominate the Young Player category with four players (Lauren Hemp, Chloe Kelly, Georgia Stanway and Ellie Roebuck); Lauren James of Manchester United and Chelsea’s Erin Cuthbert complete the line-up
