Premier League 2017-18 midseason awards

The Premier League reached its halfway point as matchweek 19 came to a close on Saturday. Manchester City have run out to a huge lead in the title race, but the battle for the remaining spots in the top four looks like it could go down to the wire, with Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, Tottenham and Burnley (!) all in the mix.

As for the relegation battle, things don’t look good for Swansea, Alan Pardew hasn’t been able to turn things around in his first month at West Brom and Newcastle are in a horrible run of form and may not strengthen as necessary if Mike Ashley doesn’t sell the club before the January transfer window. Stoke and Bournemouth are perilously close to the bottom three as well.

There’s still a long way to go, and a lot of questions to be answered, but 19 matches is more than enough to draw some conclusions. And since this is the season of giving, what better time to hand out some awards, both good and bad, to celebrate the first half of the 2017-18 Premier League season?

Best player: Kevin De Bruyne

The best player on the best team in the league. Kevin De Bruyne doesn’t lead City in goals and he’s level (at the time of writing) with David Silva and Leroy Sane in assists, but he, more than any other player, is the one who makes them tick. The quality of his passing in the final third is unsurpassed in the Premier League, and a big part of the reason City are the most lethal counter-attacking unit in Europe. Crosses from out wide, 60 yard diagonals, delicate through balls around the box — De Bruyne can, and does, do it all.

Given how many standout players City have, how well-drilled they are as a team, there’s a temptation to look elsewhere for this prize, to a player who is thriving with less help around him.
Mohamed Salah has been remarkably good in his first season, and leads the league in goals having played mostly out wide. Eden Hazard is back to his remarkable best after missing the beginning of the season with injury. And Paul Pogba, though he’s missed time through injury and suspension, has been stunning for Manchester United.

As good as those players (and a few others) have been, however, De Bruyne stands out. It’s true that he benefits from playing in a team loaded with attacking talent, and led by the best coach in the league, if not the world, but his unique skill set, his quality on the ball and his work rate winning it back, are the biggest single reason City are as dominant as they are. He showed flashes of this form last season, but has taken his game to another level in 2017-18. It’s going to take something special to stop him winning Player of the Year.

Best manager: Pep Guardiola

There have been several impressive managerial performances this season, not least Sean Dyche’s work at Burnley and Marco Silva’s at Watford, but how could this award not go to Pep Guardiola, who has guided Manchester City to the best first half of the season in Premier League history and an 11-point lead in the title race, all while playing some of the best soccer the league has seen this century? Guardiola received his fair share of criticism for a disappointing first season in England, but has exceeded all expectations in his second.

His critics will point to the fact he spent hundreds of millions in the transfer market to improve the squad, but then so did many of his closest rivals, and it’s testament to Guardiola that all of his summer signings, with the possible exception of Danilo, have been as advertised. What Guardiola wants may not be cheap, but he’s shown why it’s worth buying it for him. Beyond City’s lead in the title race, he’s also improved almost all of his players, with Raheem Sterling, Leroy Sane, John Stones and, of course, De Bruyne all in the best form of their careers.

Still, while Guardiola’s a deserving winner, Dyche deserves more than a passing mention. Burnley were widely tipped for relegation ahead of the season, but, with a squad of players who have spent more time over their careers in the Championship than the Premier League, are keeping pace with the so-called big six. Dyche has also done all this having lost two of his best players, Michael Keane and Andre Gray, in the summer. Bigger clubs (*cough* Everton *cough*) have been reluctant to consider Dyche for vacant positions, a stance which gets harder to fathom by the week. He’s doing a remarkable job.

Best signing: Mohamed Salah

Romelu Lukaku and Alvaro Morata were the marquee attacking signings of the summer, and both have delivered for the most part, sitting close to the top of the goalscoring charts. But they’ve been outshined by Mohamed Salah, who cost Liverpool half as much, and was bizarrely written off by some on account of a brief, unsuccessful stint at Chelsea in 2013-14, (around the same time, as it happens, that a certain Kevin De Bruyne also failed to make the grade at Stamford Bridge).

Salah, who mostly starts on the right of a front three but effectively acts as a second striker such are the quality of his runs inside, has given Liverpool’s attack another dimension. With Roberto Firmino so adept at dropping into a number 10 role, Salah and Sadio Mane are crucial to the Reds’ attacking output. While Mane has played well, injuries and a suspension have left him out of the team for significant chunks of the season. Salah, meanwhile, has played (and scored) in almost every game, and become the key cog in one of the best attacks in Europe. Even at $50 million, he was a bargain.

Salah wasn’t the only value signing of the summer, however. Pascal Gross cost Brighton less than $4 million, and has either scored or assisted over half of their goals this season, while Richarlison has been a revelation since joining Watford from Fluminense. The 20-year-old has scored five goals so far, and been one of the standout players for an impressive Watford side.

Worst signing: Gylfi Sigurdsson

Poor Gylfi Sigurdsson. For the second time in his career, the Iceland international has completed a high-profile move to a bigger club and failed to impress, through no real fault of his own. Sigurdsson has been a disappointment at Goodison Park so far, but it’s hard to say what he could have done differently given how poor the Toffees’ summer recruitment was. They bought too many attacking midfielders, failed to replace Romelu Lukaku and have been left with a wildly lopsided team that has been further weakened by multiple injuries to key players.

Everton signings could easily occupy an entire podium of bad signings, with Davy Klaassen and Sandro Ramirez joining Sigurdson, but the Icelandic international takes the cake for his price ($59 million, almost $20 million more than the other two combined) and his age, 28. Given his value as a long-term asset, $59 million would seem like too much for Sigurdsson even if he was replicating the production of his time at Swansea. Sigurdsson remains an extremely talented player, and things are already looking up for him now that Sam Allardyce is in charge, but nothing about this signing has aged well.

Most pleasant surprise: Watford

Watford finished 17th last season, losing their last six matches as Walter Mazzarri saw out his time at the club as you’d expect a manager who has nothing to pay for and will be moving on in the summer to see out his time at a club. Marco Silva, the Hornets’ third manager in as many Premier League seasons, earned praise for his attempt to save Hull from the drop last season, but it was hard to imagine him guiding a strangely assembled squad to anything more than a mid-table finish in his first season. Suffice it to say, expectations have risen.

The Hornets, playing arguably the most entertaining soccer in the league outside the big six, are in ninth place, with an eye on a spot in next season’s Europa League. Richarlison, the 20-year-old Brazilian bought from Fluminense in the summer, has been the standout player, but Abdoulaye Doucoure, Will Hughes and Andre Gray, among others, have excelled as well. That’s testament not just to Silva, but to the players and club as a whole, who received their fair share of criticism for an approach to manager and player recruitment that often seemed to lack any coherent vision.

In Silva, however, they appear to have found a man capable of taking them a step forward, from mid-table obscurity to Europa League contenders. The trick now will be keeping him, with Everton, among others, reportedly interested.

Biggest disappointment: Everton

This was the season Everton were going to make a run at the top four, or at least establish themselves as legitimate contenders for the top six, or at least finish seventh for the second year in a row. Halfway through the season, they’re in 10th, and paying Sam Allardyce $8 million a year to ensure they don’t get relegated.

The Toffees sacked Ronald Koeman after two months, replaced him temporarily with David Unsworth, tried to get Marco Silva, failed, tried again, failed again and ultimately, with results getting worse under Unsworth, brought in Allardyce to steady the ship. Everton won’t go down, but given expectations over the summer, the season is already a big disappointment.

Best goal: Sofiane Boufal vs. West Brom

It’s only right that the only goal Sofiane Boufal, the most mercurial of mercurial wingers, has scored in 2017-18 was the best of the season so far. Boufal hasn’t fully convinced since Southampton bought him two summers ago, but it’s not hard to see why the club liked the 24-year-old. His goal against West Brom on Oct. 21 was a stunning demonstration of his pace and skill, as he picked up the ball in his own half, beat four players and rolled a perfect finish past Ben Foster to win the match for Saints in the 85th minute.

Best game: Arsenal 1-3 Manchester United

The Arsenal-Manchester United rivalry has fallen on hard times in recent seasons, never quite reaching the heights it did during the peak Wenger-Ferguson years in the late ‘90s and early 2000s. This season, for the first time in a long time, Arsenal played United in a match worthy of the nostalgia we usually heap on this fixture, with United winning 3-1 thanks in large part to an extraordinary performance by David De Gea.

The Red Devils battered the home side in the opening stages, going up 2-0 within 11 minutes. With a rout seemingly on the cards, however, Arsenal began to dominate. They racked up 33 shots in total, forcing de Gea into 14 saves. The Gunners perhaps deserved more from the game, but the goal that killed it — Jesse Lingard’s tap-in following an astonishing piece of skill from Paul Pogba, who was later sent off — was a fitting tribute to an astonishing match.