Arsenal were big winners at the BBC Football Awards this week, with Declan Rice named as their Premier League Player of the Season, among other awards for the club.
The BBC Football Awards took place this week, with the broadcasting company’s team of pundits, journalists, and football programme makers voting for their favourites in a number of categories.
The BBC voted Declan Rice as their Player of the Season, with Rice narrowly ahead of Bruno Fernandes. The only other two players to earn a significant proportion of the votes were Igor Thiago and David Raya.
Then Mikel Arteta won Manager of the Season, but not as emphatically as you might expect given Arsenal’s title victory. The BBC voters were also big fans of Brentford’s Keith Andrews and Bournemouth’s Andoni Iraola, and there were only a couple of votes in it.
In terms of the Team of the Season, Arsenal’s back line were big winners. Raya, Rice, Jurrien Timber, William Saliba, and Gabriel Magalhaes all featured, with Manchester City’s Nico O’Reilly the only non-Arsenal defender in the team.
O’Reilly also won the BBC’s Breakthrough Player of the Season award, with Arsenal’s Max Dowman finishing in third behind Junior Kroupi, but ahead of Thiago and Rayan Cherki.
The Arsenal Women weren’t quite so successful, with Player and Manager of the Season going elsewhere. But Katie McCabe and Alessia Russo did make it into the Women’s Super League Team of the Season.
It’s particularly nice to see Rice awarded the Player of the Season award, given he missed out to Fernandes with the Premier League’s award.
Rice could still win the PFA Player of the Year award, which won’t be handed out until later this year.
The PFA take into account all competitions, which should give Rice an advantage given Manchester United’s poor season in every competition outside of the Premier League. It’s also voted on by his fellow professionals, which could impact things.
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