Virgil van Dijk and Sadio Mane are both up for the PFA Players’ Player of the Year award, alongside Manchester City’s Sergio Aguero, Raheem Serling and Bernardo Silva and Chelsea’s Eden Hazard.
Our Senegalese star and high-flying Dutchman have been excellent this season, but it’s a bit of a surprise Mo Salah isn’t up for the award.
Granted, the “Egyptian King” hasn’t played as well as he did last season – but that was always going to be hard to live up to!
The nominees for the PFA Players’ Player of the Year!
🇦🇷 @aguerosergiokun
🇳🇱 @VirgilvDijk
🇧🇪 @hazardeden10
🇸🇳 Sadio Mané
🇵🇹 @BernardoCSilva
🏴 @sterling7#PFAawards | #POTY pic.twitter.com/j6YvXaRtSJ— Professional Footballers' Association (@PFA) April 20, 2019
Salah and Spurs’ Harry Kane are clear omissions from the shortlist, but that can’t take anything away from Mane and van Dijk.
Our number four has been nothing short of impeccable in his first full season at Anfield and our wing wizard has been smashing the second half of this season after a strong first few weeks.
The Reds have kept 17 clean sheets in the Premier League this season, two more than City and five more than Chelsea – van Dijk is key to that, he’s got such a presence on the field.
Mane scored 22 times this season in all competitions and totted up five assists. Interestingly enough, Sadio has the best goals per minute ratio in Champions League (knock-out stage) history.