Paul Higham, Tom Carnduff, George Pitts and Dale Tempest discuss the best of the action from 2019 in football and dish out our annual Christmas football awards.
All of our awards and musings were included in our Christmas special podcast.
These awards are for the calendar year of 2019 and, as always, let us know your thoughts on our selections by contacting us on Twitter & Facebook.
Team of the Year
- Liverpool
Unanimous! It's not often we all agree, but after this year it has to be Jurgen Klopp’s red army doesn’t it? Yes, they ultimately failed to end their long title drought, but going toe-to-toe with Pep Guardiola’s Man City created an epic title race and they forced one of the best ever Premier League teams to win 14 games in a row to just nab the title by a point!
They compensated by winning the Champions League after THAT epic comeback against Barcelona in the semi-final and have then showed massive resilience to recover from last year’s title disappointment with a jaw-dropping start to this Premier League season.
They lost ONE game in the league all last season, and in 2019 alone they gathered 92 points from 35 Premier League games pre-Christmas – six more points than Man City won from the same number and a whopping 29 more than next-best Leicester. They are such a strong, powerful outfit, a joy to watch and just don’t look like losing. They’ve got to be the team of 2019.
- Honourable mention to Sheffield United
Just a word here (more later) for the Blades who have baffled us all by how well they have performed in 2019 - firstly just to get into the Premier League itself which was a massive achievement, but also then to more than hold their own and challenge for the top six after half of the season.
In our pre-season Premier League Podcast we tipped the Blades to stay up and we don't see them going away anytime soon either...
Manager of the Year
- Chris Wilder
Hang on, it's getting a bit weird now as all four of us agree that Wilder is the man for this one....
It’s too easy to say Guardiola or Klopp so we’ve gone for a man who gets real value for money and for us is the pound-for-pound management king.
The thinking here is that while Klopp and Guardiola won all the trophies in brilliant fashion, that is exactly what they should be doing given the resources and expenditure of the two teams.
They have wonderful squads packed with quality at every turn.
Wilder, by contrast, has performed minor miracles at Bramall Lane by taking his hometown club from Sky Bet League One to the Premier League in just three seasons in charge. He’s now doing even better, with the Blades more than holding their own in the top flight and knocking on the door of the top six.
And it’s not just the achievements, it’s the style in which these have been achieved.
Yes, the team work hard for each other but the now famous overlapping centre half tactic has taken plenty of top teams by surprise.
Everyone seems to know their jobs and Wilder’s plans seem top notch, with a change of in-game approach whether they are winning, drawing or losing.
With what he’s had to work with, he’s been the stand-out star of 2019.
LISTEN: Our Christmas special
Player of the Year
- Virgil van Dijk (Pitts & Tempest)