Is Bale the best? Or should Suarez or RvP win Player of the Year? Have your say here!
Bale has been grabbing the headlines, but is he really the best player in the Premier League? Cast your vote now
Gareth Bale is impressing all football fans - except perhaps Arsenal
supporters - with his all-action displays this season. He grabbed
another two goals last night, including a late winner, as Spurs beat West Ham 3-2.
But
is the Welsh wonder the hottest player in the Premier League right now?
Should he be a shoe-in for the Player of the Year award?
Our
reporters have made compelling cases for Bale, Luis Suarez and Robin van
Persie here, but who do you think should win? Have a read and cast your
vote below.
Darren Lewis on Gareth Bale
Matchwinner: Bale has produced some outstanding performances for Spurs
Getty
It is not just about what he did on Monday night.
It is about what he has been doing all season for Spurs, except now he is adding goals to his game.
And, quite simply, he is indeed the best player in the Premier League right now.
Luis
Suarez may have the most voracious appetite, Robin van Persie may be
spearheading Manchester United towards the title with the most goals,
but for me it is Bale who remains a joy to watch in every game.
One of the most shared articles on Twitter at the moment is a Daily Mail piece from 2009.
It
is based on a Mirror report that the former Birmingham boss Alex
McLeish had been lining up a £3million for Bale - described at the time
as a 'flop'.
The piece has been retweeted more than 3,250 times - a
figure that will have increased even more in the time it has taken you
to read this.
Since then, how the fallen have grown mighty.
In
recent seasons he has produced towering performances (cast your mind
back to Inter Milan home and away in the Champions League) to have us
piling on the superlatives.
Now he is doing it on a regular basis.
He
has scored eight times in his last six Spurs games. He has netted 15
times in the Premier League this season - only Suarez and Van Persie
have scored more - and his club total for the campaign is 19.
Like I said, however, it is not just about the goals. There is so much more to him as a player.
The
electrifying frisson of excitement that he sends around a stadium when
he goes on one of his galloping runs, dropping his shoulder to ghost
past opponents or simply smashing them out of his way.
The
adrenaline rush that ripples around a ground when he grabs the ball for a
free kick, no matter how far out (within reason) late in a game.
It
is about that dead ball ability described by the Lyon coach Remi Garde
as being "as good as having a penalty" after Bale had netted in the
final minute of the first leg to give Tottenham a crucial, arguably
decisive, advantage.
That first leg free-kick against Lyon is
another reason why Bale just edges it in a photo-finish with Suarez and
Van Persie for me.
It had come with virtually the last kick of the
game, just as it did on Monday night against West Ham. It was Bale's
'David Beckham v Greece' moment. A point at which Spurs had staked
everything on red and simply prayed for it to come up. Free kick specialist: Bale scores against Lyon
AP
It did. Big players deliver in those moments, just as Van Persie did in the Manchester derby.
They
exist for them. They relish them. The beauty of Bale is that whomever
your own specific fancy is in this battle of the big players, there is
so much more to come from him in particular.
While Suarez is 26 and Robin van Persie is 29, Bale is the youngest of the trio at just 23.
Don't get me wrong. I fully accept that free-scoring van Persie knows a things or two about netting from dead-ball situations.
You
only have to spend 90 minutes watching Luis Suarez at work for
Liverpool to marvel at an appetite and a work rate that would put many
Premier League players to shame.
Like Bale and Van Persie he too
has been carrying the team on his back. Like both those players Suarez
simply refuses to give up until the job is done.
I have just gone for Bale because when most other players are crying off he continues running forever.
I
say Bale because although Van Persie has been decisive in the title
race, I put that as much down to Roberto Mancini's mismanagement of the
top-class strikers at his disposal as much as Van the Man's prolific
strike rate.
I say Bale because of his ability to take the game by the scruff of the neck and go past half the team as he did at Norwich.
Take away the goals of Bale, Suarez and Van Persie and all three of their clubs are in very different League positions.
That is the value of each man to his outfit.
I go for Bale because his goals - if they put his team into the Champions League - could make Spurs a super-power again.
I
say Bale because he is nowhere near his peak and yet, whatever team you
support, you see in him a player that reminds you why you love
football.
Hopefully the debate over this will not descend into a
tribal one. There are outstanding features around all three players that
enable them to state their case.
We should all simply be delighted that they are making that case within our game.
David McDonnell makes the case for Robin van Persie
Robin van Persie: The Dutchman has eclipsed both Bale and Suarez, says McDonnell
Shaun Botterill
There is only one man who can be crowned Player of the Year - Robin van Persie.
Gareth
Bale may have made a late push for the accolade with a spectacular run
of decisive strikes, while Luis Suarez's 25 goals this season, in a
distinctly average Liverpool side, deserves praise.
But for goals, consistency of performance and overall impact this season, van Persie has eclipsed both with his outstanding first season at Manchester United since his £24million move from Arsenal.
Van
Persie has plundered 23 goals for United this season, 19 of them in the
Premier League, his ruthlessness in front of the target worth a
remarkable 22 points to Sir Alex Ferguson's side in the title race.
No
wonder the United boss was prepared to pay £24m for a 29-year-old,
while Manchester City, in for van Persie long before United, refused to
budge from their original bid of £15m, a costly mistake for supposedly
the world's richest club.
But with United 12 points clear of City
with 11 games to go, it is clear van Persie, as Roberto Mancini has
publicly acknowledged, has ultimately proved the difference between the
two local rivals in this season's title race.
From his double late
strike to snatch a 3-2 win at Southampton early in the season, to his
last-minute free-kick to win the Manchester derby by the same margin at
the Etihad Stadium in December, van Persie has been immense.
On
three other occasions in the Premier League this season - against
Reading, Liverpool and West Ham - a goal from the Dutchman has won the
game for United, underlining his importance to Ferguson's side.
But
van Persie is more than just a goalscorer, which is why he gets my vote
for Player of the Year. In addition to his goals, he has 10 assists to
his name in the Premier League, an impressive total for a striker.
If
United can emulate the club's Treble-winning heroes of 1999 this season
by scooping the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup, the Player
of the Year award would have to go to van Persie for the second season
running.
Back in 1999, with the votes split through so many of
United's players being nominated for their Treble heroics, Tottenham's
David Ginola ended up being crowned Footballer of the Year by the
Football Writers' Association.
United boss Ferguson has never let
journalists forget that perceived injustice, but as impressive as Bale
has been this season, I cannot see another Spurs player pipping a United
man to the individual honour again.
Van Persie has been
unplayable at times this season and even if United end up with just the
Premier League title this season, he will have to go down as the player
of the season, simply because he alone has made the difference.
Luis Suarez gets David Maddock's vote
Cream of the Kop: Luis Suarez is tops, as far as David Maddock is concerned
John Powell / Getty
There have been moments this season when Luis Suarez has made
thousands of grown men gasp. For that reason alone, he deserves to be
footballer of the year. The Liverpool forward
has skills that make you shake your head in wonder. They are skills
that are beyond mere mortals, and the first criteria for any true
football great is to take his audience to a level they can't even
imagine, let alone replicate.
Suarez has done that consistently
this season, he has even had opponents instinctively open-mouthed in
admiration, and he has entertained like no other player in the Premier
League.
Gareth Bale, of course, has done wondrous things too, but
perhaps not quite on the scale of Suarez. The South American has a
vision in his passing and movement that is beyond even Bale, and a
technique with the ball at his feet unmatched in English football.
Much
is made of his diving, and it's true, he does go down easily enough,
like most modern forwards. Yet Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo aside,
no striker takes more punishment because no striker is so tauntingly
audacious with the ball at his feet.
The fact that he has the
ability to mesmerise opponents, and is courageous enough and clever
enough to jink past them consistently is reason alone for him to get the
award this season, but there are other factors too.
Thanks to the
new system put in place at Liverpool by Brendan Rodgers, he has been
given the freedom to play his own game, and has responded by discovering
a consistency in front of goal his game previously lacked.
Suarez
is now up there with Van Persie as the most deadly goalscorer in the
league, which is some feat given that last season he seemed to require
six chances for every goal.
It is a remarkable transformation, and
one born of a supreme confidence in his ability, a knowledge that he IS
better than anyone else, and can demonstrate it almost at will.
He's
played more games that anyone at Liverpool this season, and his
appetite is undimmed. They were 5-0 up against Swansea, and he STILL got
furious about being substituted with 10 minutes to go.
It is that
desire that sometimes takes him over the precipice, but also makes him a
world class talent, and it is another aspect of his game that makes him
perhaps the most complete player in the Premier League this season.
Who should be crowned Player of the Year?
Just got this article from Mirror sports; pls let us feel ur pulse...
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