Gareth Bale Deserves EPL Player of the Year Award
Gareth Bale of Tottenham (Google Creative Commons)
Is there truly any adjective to describe Gareth Bale’s season? Extraordinary, legendary, unbelievable, all these words just don’t seem to do Bale justice. Even his tally of 18 goals in 29 Premier League games does not tell the whole story.
The Welshman has been instrumental to almost every Tottenham victory. In last weekend’s key fixture against Manchester City, Bale was subdued for much of the match. Then, in five minutes he had a beautiful assist and a goal. The winger has had an impact every time he’s been on the field for Spurs and for all his phenomenal play Bale deserves to be named Player of the Year.
Andre Villa-Boas seems to agree, as he recently backed Bale to win the award (via Daily Mail):
“Gareth has had an outstanding year. I think he’s in with a big, big chance [of winning] for what he has produced this season. We’ve seen some spectacular moments. It certainly has been a great, great season for Bale so I think he is a serious contender and all of us would be very happy if he was to win.”
The shortlist for the award shows a couple of viable candidates. The players with an outside shot seem to be Michael Carrick, Juan Mata, and Eden Hazard. They have had great seasons, but not up to the caliber of the three remaining candidates.
This narrows the list down to Luis Suarez, Robin Van Persie, and Gareth Bale. Van Persie and Suarez have been running rampant all season, scoring goals left and right.
Van Persie has a great goal scoring record (24 goals in 34 games), but disappeared too much during the latter part of the season and is probably not as important to United as Bale is to Tottenham.
This leaves Luis Suarez, who has a great argument for receiving the trophy. He is heavy relied upon by Liverpool and has immense quality. The problem with Suarez is Liverpool are just not as competitive as Tottenham. Also, if we’re being realistic, after the infamous “biting’ incident” there isn’t a shot the FA will award the trophy to a player surrounded by such controversy. Both Van Persie and Suarez have showed they belong in the conversation, but in the end Bale’s season has just been too special.
