Gavan Casey
What will be your defining memory from this season?
I’ve repressed most of it already but I’d be confident that the memories of watching a 33-year-old Ashley Young scurry Fred Flintstone-like towards any loose ball amidst his meteoric physical decline, only to realise halfway that not only was he not going to get within an ass’s roar of the ball but he might not even get there in time to offer a hopelessly mistimed challenge as a token gesture, will resurface like some kind of PTSD down the road. Maybe even literally down the road as I attempt to cross it but can’t get by the first man.
What prediction do you wish you hadn’t made?
My predictions weren’t a million miles off but I regret saying I was excited to see how Declan Rice developed over the course of the season. I should have known better than to trust a feen from Douglas.
Who was your Player of the Season?
Virgil van Dijk for the simple fact that I believe Liverpool would have been worse off without him than Manchester City would have been without Raheem Sterling. His stats, as well, are beefy: 19 clean sheets, 72% tackle success rate, 227 duels won versus only 70 lost, and 169 aerial duels won versus only 55 lost.
Kalidou Koulibaly and Raphael Varane offer more in a purely athletic sense but if I was naming a World XI tomorrow, I’d choose Van Dijk first and then decide upon his partner.
Name the best and worst signing of the season.
Best: They haven’t improved statistically in defence — actually, statistically, they’ve had a freakishly similar season — but Newcastle’s Fabian Schar was a steal at £3.6m. He only really started to figure around October but he’s been consistently excellent at the back since, and his three goals have been key: two in a win against Cardiff, one in a win against Burnley — both crucial results for the Magpi–
– nah, look, it was probably Alisson, all right.
Worst: I know this is technically Premier League-related but Fred will always have Paris, so his fellow defensive midfielder André-Frank Zambo Anguissa is my guy here.
Fulham broke their club transfer record to sign him for £30m on deadline day in the summer, presumably because his name reads like that of a fairly decent Football Manager re-gen. He was astonishingly bad; made 15 league starts and did piddle-all else. He’ll be earning somewhere in the region of 60 grand-per-week in the Championship next season and, if he’s still there in two years, will probably be the highest-earning player in League One.
Best individual performance you witnessed this season?
David De Gea’s 11-save game against Spurs at Wembley, for all the good it did.
Which team did you most enjoy watching (aside from the club you support)?
Going to plead the fifth here.
Name your favourite moment from this season.
Shane Long scoring the fastest-ever Premier League goal. It just seems so befitting of the man that Long will continue to torment people for all eternity — I love the idea of pub quizzers in the 2060s wracking their brains for the name of that busy Oirish bloke who couldn’t hit a barn door — but also that the goal in question was a direct result of Long’s tenacity, which wavered not once over the 17 years since he had last scored.
Which Irish player who impressed you most?
Matt Doherty for all the reasons outlined by everybody else who has also doubtless chosen Matt Doherty.
Describe the season in one sentence.
“Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on.” – Jonathan Safran Foer.
Gavin Cooney
What will be your defining memory from this season?
The season was largely about the relentlessness of the top two – and the wafer-thin margins that have separated them – and that’s best summed up by the image of the goal-line decision made in Manchester City’s 2-1 win against Liverpool at the Etihad in January. Had Sadio Mane’s effort travelled 1.1 cm further before John Stones hacked it from the line — somehow evading Mo Salah in the process — Liverpool would be two points clear at the top and heading for an unbeaten season with the second-highest points total ever.
What prediction do you wish you hadn’t made?
That Fulham would finish the season comfortably ensconced in the top half of the league. Given the amount of money they spent in the summer, their individual quality and the fact they’ve suddenly started keeping clean sheets and playing cohesively once they had been mathematically sent down…theirs is arguably the most disgraceful relegation in the league’s history.
Who was your Player of the Season?
Virgil van Dijk.
Name the best and worst signing of the season.
Alisson Becker made a huge impact at Liverpool and I was also impressed by Ricardo, James Maddison and Youri Tielemans (all Leicester), Salomon Rondon (Newcastle) and Lucas Digne (Everton) but I reckon the best deal was Bournemouth picking up David Brooks. Seven goals and five assists in 29 league games is an impressive return for a guy who cost just £11 million from Sheffield United. He will improve even further next season, and will leave for a heck of a lot more than what they paid for him.
The worst is probably Arsenal signing Denis Suarez…but I’m going for someone else on a technicaliteh’. That Man United gave a four-year contract to Phil Jones, a defender they know is usually injured and not good enough on the odd occasion he is fit sums up the kind of chaotic thinking general at United these days.
Best individual performance you witnessed this season?
It has to be Bernardo Silva’s in the January win against Liverpool. He has been sensational this season — he’s Raheem Sterling’s closest rival for the club’s player of the season — and he delivered when it mattered most, in what has turned out as an effective play-off for the title. He has had more gilded games, but here his work-ethic was astonishing, covering 13.7 kilometres. Teams have to outwork Liverpool to get the better of them, and City have been the only ones capable of doing that. Bernardo led the charge.
Which team did you most enjoy watching (aside from the club you support)?
Arsenal were reliably good craic, as were Bournemouth, who have this strange habit of appearing to constantly lose yet never drop lower than 12th. But I’ll go for Wolves: they are exceptionally well-coached and weren’t afraid to take games to more illustrious opponents. As a result they have taken points from five of the top six, with the outliers being Liverpool…whom they beat in the FA Cup and play on the final day.
Name your favourite moment from this season
The Kompany Shot was pretty amazing, but I’ll go for Divock Origi’s winner against Everton at Anfield in December. It ignited a proper title race, and had the added benefit of being utterly, utterly hilarious.
Which Irish player who impressed you most?
Declan Ri- sorry, no more. The right answer is Matt Doherty.
Describe the season in one sentence.
A title race that became a song of City’s ice and Liverpool’s fire…albeit with a different outcome. Right?
Paul Fennessy
What will be your defining memory from this season?
The obvious answer would be the sheer relentlessness with which both Man City and Liverpool have won games, but it will be hard to look back at 2018-19 and not think of Man United. Every week, there seemed to be a new drama and every week, pundits seemed to change their mind on whether they were any good or not. The fact that Paul Pogba was both routinely lambasted and also made the PFA Team of the Year epitomises what a crazy, chaotic, unpredictable, illogical season it’s been at Old Trafford
What prediction do you wish you hadn’t made?
I was one of those silly people who thought United would finish in the top four and overlooked the obvious problem of Jose Mourinho’s third-season syndrome striking again. Also, identifying Declan Rice as ‘the Irish player to watch out for’ was, with the benefit of hindsight, tempting fate.
Who was your Player of the Season?
I could be boring and adhere to the consensus by choosing either Virgil van Dijk or Raheem Sterling, but instead I’ll opt for Sadio Mane. He has scored 20 goals, exactly double the tally he managed last season, and could yet overtake Salah as top scorer if he hits a hat-trick on the final day. It’s incredible to see how far the 27-year-old Senegal international has come since his days at Metz, Red Bull Salzburg and Southampton, and he was also magnificent during the week in the remarkable victory over Barcelona.
Name the best and worst signing of the season.
Alisson is surely the signing of the season. It seems doubtful that Liverpool would have had so successful a campaign had they kept faith with Loris Karius.
As for worst? There are several contenders at Fulham. Jean Michaël Seri, Maxime Le Marchand, Andre-Frank Zambo Anguissa and André Schürrle spring to mind, as the London club spent over €100 million and still somehow managed to get relegated.
Best individual performance you witnessed this season?
I’m going to cheat a little and say Kevin De Bruyne in Man City’s Champions League home game against Tottenham. The Premier League has been desperately lacking in competitive games, but this European encounter was different, with both sides frequently attacking as if their lives depended on it. The Belgian international was at his magical best that night and almost inspired another scarcely believable Champions League comeback. City, while they have coped admirably in his absence, are a different animal when he is in the team and on top form.
Which team did you most enjoy watching (aside from the club you support)?
It’s hard to love Man City on account of all the morally dubious off-field issues surrounding the club, but it’s easy to admire the way they play the game. They are unquestionably the best team to watch in the Premier League and quite possibly in Europe, and the historic domestic treble they look set to secure will be an accurate reflection of just how dominant they have been.
Name your favourite moment from this season.
The sheer brilliance and apparent infallibility of the top-two sides means it’s actually been a fairly undramatic title race. Both teams winning non-stop and doing so comfortably for the most part has not been especially fun to watch for neutrals. One exception though was the Spurs-Liverpool match at Anfield. That encounter seemed to be played permanently at 100 miles an hour with a fittingly thrilling conclusion, Moussa Sissoko’s gilt-edged miss followed by Toby Alderweireld’s last-gasp own goal leading to appropriately mental scenes at Anfield. It was football as it should be played, with both well-matched sides deserving credit for their part in an enthralling encounter.
Which Irish player impressed you most?
This is another slightly left-field pick, but the maturity shown by Mark Travers for his Premier League debut for Bournemouth against Spurs bodes very well for his future in the game. Granted, it was a low-stakes match for Eddie Howe’s side, but stepping up at that level and earning the man-of-the-match award against one of the best sides in Europe is still no mean feat. Honourable mentions too for Matt Doherty, Shane Duffy and the April version of Shane Long.
Describe the season in one sentence.
You can buy success (unless you’re Man United or Fulham).
Gavan Casey, Murray Kinsella and Bernard Jackman tee up Saturday’s Champions Cup final and look at the backroom problems in Munster.:
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