Jamie Carragher used to rule the roost within the Liverpool dressing room – and it wasn’t a democracy based on the Reds legend.
That’s as a result of the previous defender, who made a whopping 737 appearances for the membership and lifted the Champions League in 2005, had a strict rule when it got here to voting within the PFA Player of the Year awards. The Sky Sports pundit lifted the lid on the method on the Stick to Football podcast, sponsored by Sky Bet.
Carragher mentioned the candidates for this 12 months’s PFA award with Gary Neville, Ian Wright, Roy Keane and Jill Scott. And whereas he raised some eyebrows by failing to say both Virgil van Dijk or Mohamed Salah – league leaders Liverpool’s high performers this season – as frontrunners for the accolade, extra controversial but was the revelation about his enjoying days.
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The now 45-year-old requested Ian Wright if “it got political” when Arsenal stars would make their picks for the award. He stated: “I’d get the [PFA] forms basically and I’d whack them out and if I thought someone had a decent chance of winning something – Stevie [Gerrard] has got a chance or [Fernando] Torres has got a chance for player of the year – it would be like [in the changing room], ‘Well no one can vote for his rival!’ I’d make sure of that!”
Wright replied “wow Jamie, that is disgraceful” whereas a smiling Keane stated: “That’s childish, very immature. That’s not good.” And a maybe not totally honest Neville chipped in “we wouldn’t do that,” as Carragher shrugged and grinned.
Do you suppose most Premier League groups do the identical with regards to voting for the PFA Player of the Year award? Let us know within the feedback part beneath
(Image: GETTY)
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During Carragher’s time with Liverpool’s senior squad, 1996 to 2013, Steven Gerrard was the one team-mate to win the PFA Player of the Year award, in 2005/06. That was the season he scored 23 objectives enjoying predominantly on the precise wing and produced his well-known man of the match efficiency in opposition to West Ham to win the FA Cup, in what grew to become often called ‘the Gerrard closing’.
That season additionally noticed Carragher voted on to the PFA Team of the Year, the one time he achieved that feat, in comparison with Gerrard making it eight instances. Since Carragher’s retirement, Luis Suarez, Mohamed Salah (twice) and Virgil van Dijk have all been named PFA Player of the Year for his or her performances for Liverpool.
Manchester City’s midfield rock Rodri is the present favorite for this 12 months’s PFA award, together with his team-mates Erling Haaland and Bernardo Silva, plus Liverpool trio Salah, Van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold, plus Arsenal’s £105m summer season signing Declan Rice, additionally within the operating.