After placing no fewer than 8 players on the Professional Footballers Association’s XI for ’06-’07, the Guardian’s Paul Doyle and Scott Murray scoff at a poll that took place all the way back in January of this year.
Of course, the players could just as easily have cast their votes before a ball was even kicked – by simply imprinting their ballot papers with the words “whoever gets hyped up the most”. The result would surely have been the same: a PFA team of the season featuring no less than eight MU Rowdies plus $tevie Mbe, Didier Drogba and – in a shock nod to life beyond the big four – Dimitar Berbatov! In fairness to the players, it may just have been their famous fondness for hilarious pranks that led them to choose Gary Neville and Patrice Evra as their best full-backs. But it’s more likely that to them, as to Second-Choice Steve, unsung sorts such as Nicky Shorey simply don’t exist.
Paul Scholes, Ryan Giggs and Mbe all made the grade, of course, even though they’ve only flickered compared to consistently bright burners such as Mikel Arteta and David Bentley. Rio Ferdinand, when not coming close to beheading old ladies with wayward whacks, has been decent, but was he really better than Daniel Agger, Ricardo Carvalho or Bolton’s Abdoulaye Meité? And the omission of Blackburn’s £2.5m bargain Benni McCarthy is even more scandalous than what the Fiver once did to a poster of Toyah Wilcox (shown above).
Edwin van der Sar was named the league’s best goalkeeper despite the fact that his penchant for parrying shots into the path of in-rushing strikers suggests he couldn’t catch French pox in a knocking shop. Which reminds us: the one anomaly in all of this is that players overlooked THE BESTEST MOST AMAZINGEST PLAYER IN ALL OF ENGLAND AND THEREFORE THE WORLD: Tabloid Wayne.