Bruno Fernandes over Mo Salah for Player of the Year? Sorry, what?

Editor F365 25 Apr 2025 11:01 AM

Mo Salah and Bruno Fernandes

It’s been a dull Premier League season. We get it. There has been no Premier League title race, no Premier League relegation battle and no Golden Boot battle with Mo Salah scoring a ludicrous 27 goals.

Salah has long had the PFA award sewn up and the FWA award will surely follow. Unless of course you are contrary as f*** and desperately seek engagement.

Which is how we get here…

Has any player had a more profound influence on his team this season than Bruno Fernandes?

The answer is no and that’s why he gets my Player of the Year vote.

Column: 👇👇👇
https://t.co/Gp9rrb7FqY

— Ian Ladyman (@Ian_Ladyman_DM) April 24, 2025

This is the Football Editor of the Daily Mail. Now everybody is entitled to their opinion – and we are entitled to call it absolutely f***ing ridiculous – but he has opened his tweet with a question that has an alternative answer so very obvious that it feels like there is no other explanation than he is just being a d***.

Can there be an influence more ‘profound’ than logging 45 Premier League goal involvements as your team wins the actual title at a canter?

Apparently the answer is that yes, it is more ‘profound’ to be the very best player in a really sh*t team.

Now Mediawatch likes Bruno Fernandes and feels like his attitude gets an unfair press, but crowning him Player of the Year in a season when Manchester United are 14th in the Premier League table would embarrass the f*** out of him. We are pretty sure he would be a) confused and b) devastated that this has been committed to print.

Here’s how the madness begins…

‘The winner of the Football Writers’ Footballer of the Year award tends to come from teams who win the Premier League. This has been the case in seven of the last 10 seasons. Only once in that time – when Mo Salah won it playing for fourth-placed Liverpool in 2018 – has it escaped the hands of the top two.

‘This season that should change. The most influential footballer in the Premier League has been Bruno Fernandes of Manchester United and he already has my vote.’

It ‘should’ change, should it? It ‘should’ change in the season when there has been possibly the most obvious winner in the Premier League’s entire history? This is nothing short of lunacy.

‘He is not a popular footballer outside of Old Trafford, but then how many United players are? United supporters continue to wear their ABU – Anyone but United – moniker as a badge of honour and with reason.’

Hmmmm. We’re not sure the ABUs complained when Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo won awards in the 2000s. Could that be – and this might blow some minds – because they were the very best players playing for the very best team?

Nobody thinks Bruno Fernandes being Footballer of the Year is ludicrous because he plays for Manchester United; it’s ludicrous because he plays for this Manchester United, who are sh*t, while Liverpool and particularly their Egyptian winger have been bloody marvellous.

‘Fernandes has had his faults for sure and I have written vehemently about them before, specifically in the context of his role as United captain. The 30-year-old still has occasional problems with his temperament and could certainly wave his hands around a little less when things go against him.

‘But Luis Suarez has won this award before. So has Roy Keane. It’s not a prize handed out to choir boys. It’s about football.’

Luis Suarez won in 2013/14 when he won the Golden Boot and was – again, this feels important – the best player in the Premier League; Roy Keane won when he captained Manchester United to yet another Premier League.

Again, nobody thinks Bruno Fernandes being Footballer of the Year is ludicrous because he has a poor temperament; it’s ludicrous because he plays for this Manchester United, who are sh*t, while Liverpool and particularly their Egyptian winger have been bloody marvellous.

There are a f*** of a lot of straw men being destroyed here when there is a very real curly-haired, smiling Egyptian winger with his arms in the air.

‘United are 14th in the Premier League and have broken the kind of club records nobody wants. But where would they be without their best player?’

Maybe 15th? Brentford might have been a couple of places lower than 11th without Bryan Mbeumo; shall we hand him an award too?

‘Bruno Fernandes has been the most influential player in the Premier League this season.

‘Mohamed Salah has been exceptional, but benefits from being in a side set up to suit his needs.’

It’s tricky to even lightly grasp the logic here, but is Ladyman arguing that awards should only be given to players who are playing in poor teams? Phil Foden, Erling Haaland, give back the gongs you thought you earned by being the best player in the Premier League. You have not truly earned them.

‘It’s not just about goals. It’s about big goals and big moments. It’s about contributions that shape and change games of football. It’s about driving a team forward.’

‘Big goals and big moments’, you say? Shame then, that Fernandes has not scored a single winner in the Premier League this season. Not one. His penalty strike against Manchester City in December was the equaliser that sparked a victory but in the Premier League, there have been no ‘big goals and big moments’. Fernandes has shone in the Europa League but so has Kasper Høgh and there ain’t no f***er suggesting he should win the Ballon d’Or.

‘Most will disagree with me,’ writes Ladyman. Damn right. Because you’re wrong.

He finds 427 different ways of saying the Footballer of the Year award should not go to the actual Footballer of the Year (LOL), but does find room to write: ‘He has been consistent in appearances – missing just one Premier League game – and goals. After a slow start – he didn’t register his first goal until the end of October – he has never gone more than five games without scoring.’

He does take penalties, Ian.