Liverpool have 2nd sewn up - EPL 2018/19

Son's been outstanding this year, really should be in that list

patchy til winter tbh

kane son and two centre halves shouldve been in close contention, sissoko since turn of year

Think Wijnaldum deserves to be in Pogba's spot tbf.

Hazard has to be on the team of the year, either take off Pogba or Mane

meh at ederson/aguero tbh dont even @

Does Pogba's presence mean they were voting in late Feb / early March?

sissoko & wijnaldum have had decent seasons but they'd struggle to break into a top 15 midfielders of the season let alone team of the year

agreed overall but since barca draw sissoko has been the greatest football of all time and i dunno that you've taken this into account?

Pogba should be nowhere near that

I'd go alisson, wan-bissaka, virgil, laporte, robertson, fernandinho, wijnaldum, bernardo Silva, hazard, mane, aguero

Where are the Spurs? Why do you hate ILX?

Wijnaldum has been outstanding, not in top 15 mids is crazy talk

I would maybe have stuck Son in and rejigged a bit but gone no Spurs on principle

wan-bissaka for me def, hazard ahead of mane

agreed drop pogba but not for hazard because team is just a list of attacking mids then, but im struggling to think of a purely central midfielder that stands out, tempted to say doucouré maybe

Doucouŕe a good shout

Midfielders who have done better than Georginio Gregion Emile Wijnaldum this season, a list:

Roberto Maximiliano Pereyra
Rúben Diogo da Silva Neves
Gylfi Þór Sigurðsson
Lucas Sebastián Torreira Di Pascua
Felipe Anderson Pereira Gomes
Luka Milivojević
James Daniel Maddison
İlkay Gündoğan
Christian Dannemann Eriksen
Abdoulaye Doucouré
Diogo José Teixeira da Silva
João Filipe Iria Santos Moutinho
Henrikh Mkhitaryan
Ryan Fraser
N'Golo Kanté
David Josué Jiménez Silva
Willian Borges da Silva
Paul Labile Pogba

listing dudes out by their middle names when shit gets rated

I see Aymeric Jean Louis Gerard Alphonse Laporte's names have been mentioned.

Lol @ the notion mkhitaryan has had a better season than wij

Ogmor you are coming across a bit MOTD here

MOCD wot wot

Wow at anyone going meh at Aguero.

agmehro

fair fucks you play up front for man city, hey im just trying to promote discussion here but not for me trevor

one non penalty league goal in 2019 iirc

i mean he's obviously great but not outrageous to make a case for his omission from a team of the year. i'd probably still have him in mind you.

Completely forgot sterling, stick him in ahead of Mr Controversy wijnaldum

nah not in centre mid sure!

I'm changing my formation to an ossie ardiles style 4-1-5

Or just swap him in for aguero who has had much better seasons let's face it

Milner has has a p good season just saying

Milner has been much better than Wijnaldum and has played maybe 50% of games?

Ogmor's list is not actually especially challopy, Mikky T aside. James Maddison in particular has been excellent, same with the Wolves lot.

Who has been better than Aguero over the past decade? And somehow he still feels slightly undervalued? Stick Gabriel Jesus in that team and tell me it's just about having amazing players behind you.

of ours Neves is still learning and hasn't consistently impressed this season but he's 22, it's all good. Moutinho is pound for pound the Prem signing of the season, the difference between a top half and a bottom half finish for us at the very least.

aguero is surely the most underrated world class player itw

wijnaldum is a curious one really, he's v industrious but it's hard to work out what marks him out. he's got a good range of passing but you couldn't really say he's a play-maker, he doesn't cross or create much and has offered significantly less goal threat than shane duffy never mind mkhitaryan, so his main skillset is really pressing and, if we want to elevate him above sissoko, mb 'decision-making'? agree that milner is the more obvious pick from the liverpool midfield tho I do like fabinho

but it's hard to work out what marks him out

This is why I love him, and why Klopp usually puts him first on the sheet. He's terribly underrated because he's nigh on invisible. You don't see (natch) invisible yet invaluable players like him any more. "He doesn't cross or create much" is plain wrong, he's instrumental to many of Liverpool's goals. I'm sure there's an OPTA tweet proving you wrong here. Decisive.

Choosing Mhki, of all midfielders, over Gini this season is madness. Mhki does things right but stumbles about, you always hear him, always know what he will do, clumsily. Gini is a ghost. Ghosts should be treasured more, even though I understand they're terribly unsexy and outright - seemingly - not present.

I'm probably Pogba's biggest stan on here, but apart from a couple of matches he's been woefully underperforming all season, he doesn't deserve to be in this XI.

I naively assumed this discussion was taking place after ppl had taken a look at the stats. Wijnaldum is joint 202nd for most crosses this season and has 0 assists.

0 assists doesn't mean he's not involved in goals. It doesn't mean anything really. Gini's a typical 6. Sixes bridge between defenders and attackers, but aren't 8's or 10's. Sixes hover between defenders to pick up the ball and get things going. Sixes don't usually make assists. Gini's an old-fashioned spielmacher.

Frenkie de Jong, who's off to Barca this summer for 85 million, is a similar type of player. (almost) never appreciated for what they do (in this case FdJ obv is appreciated for what he does and can, but you catch my drift). Sissoko in a way is, too.

yeah come on we're not talking about baseball here folks. stats like assists are helpful but misleading. xavi or scholesy would often have unimpressive goal and assist totals fr'instance

I mean on one hand, being 'involved' in goals is a p low and pointless bar & it's not just assists; there aren't really any stats that mark out wijnaldum. he's a stats ghost! but stats aren't everything, esp for a spoiler, and we are in the age of the spoiler as football is getting so fragmented and focused on transitions. there are plenty of spoilers around tho and a lot of them are more versatile.

He is the ticking metronomic heartbeat of this team. I've seen p much every minute of every lpool game this season and i don't recall him losing the ball once

And he plays very centrally so no crosses is not a relevant metric on which to judge

there aren't really any stats that mark out wijnaldum

And yet, and yet, etc. Would like to read an honest list of spoilers more versatile than Gini, because the list you posted up here was mostly challops. (Pereyra? Fraser? All those Silva's? Mhki, really?!)

as the stats-defender I note with interest that wijnaldum does have v low figures for losing possession (8.1 times a game), which is verging on dembele territory

Fabinho is absolute quality imo but only really emerged halfway through the season. His passing from deep is a joy and he breaks up the play really well.

dembele never lost possession 8 times in a game

scholes assist/goals ratio would have been high

i mean lads

An assist every 8 or 9 games

Goal every 5,which admittedly is higher than I remember

I'm probably Pogba's biggest stan on here but apart from a couple of matches he's been woefully underperforming all season

That's a pretty odd opinion for Pogba's biggest stan to take because he's easily been Utd's best player this season, even outside the notable post-Mourinho purple patch.

Does he deserve to be in the team of the season? Who knows. But he's performed in way more than a "couple of matches" and even in the recent terrible run of form he's been the only player who's created anything for our bumbling front men, which is a fucking miracle considering the lazy tossers couldn't make an off the ball run if you were paying them €200,000 a week to do it.

The guy can't win, honestly.

Mkhitaryan is the wrong player to be discussing here because he is really a modern wide forward and should be compared to the likes of Sterling, Salah, Sane, Son etc and by those standards he comes up way short.

Most of the higher level teams have at least one player like Wijnaldum whose job it is to glue moves together and transition from defence to attack without every appearing particularly great at either and without being visionary enough to ever look like a real playmaker or without being an orthodox box-to-box type either. Gundogan at City, Dembele/Sissoko at Spurs, yes Pogba at United and its one reason why his contribution to the team always seems undervalued. Really the stats that matter with these players are number of passes, the number of moves they're involved in that eventually lead to a goal, the amount of running they do etc.

The only genuinely elite midfield in the league, City's, by in large sidestepped the need for that player last year by shifting a world class playmaker in KDB into a deeper role where he started in the gap between Fernandinho and a more orthodox #10 like David Silva but regularly appearing much further up the pitch. Not every team can have a Modric and that's the next best thing.

It's not remotely controversial to suggest Pogba has been comfortably the best player in position this year.