Bruno Fernandes was judged the standout player of the 2025-26 Premier League by the people who had to face him every week, even though he did not finish the campaign with the title.<\/p>\n
That verdict mattered because the PFA award is decided by players rather than journalists, supporters, sponsors or panels. It carried extra weight, then, even if the result still stirred disagreement. Fernandes had already collected the FWA Footballer of the Year and the Premier League Player of the Season, and the PFA honour completed a clean sweep of the major individual prizes in English soccer.<\/p>\n
Not everyone accepted the outcome. \u201cRidiculous,\u201d said celebrity Arsenal fan Piers Morgan after Fernandes received the large PFA trophy in London, adding that Rice \u201cshould have won this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Declan Rice had been the most obvious alternative, helped by his role in Arsenal\u2019s first Premier League triumph in 22 years. He still finished with recognition of his own, earning a place in the PFA Team of the Year alongside four Arsenal teammates: William Saliba, Gabriel, Jurri\u00ebn Timber and goalkeeper David Raya. Fernandes also gave a hint of where his own vote went, saying on stage: \u201cI won\u2019t say who it was but I voted for [an] Arsenal player,\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet the pattern behind the voting was familiar. The best individual performer is not always a title winner, and the award history backed that up. Fernandes\u2019s treble followed a run in which the top honours often matched the same player across different bodies, but not always from a champion side.<\/p>\n
Rice had an excellent season and was central to Arsenal\u2019s title run, but Fernandes was the more influential figure overall. Manchester United finished third, though that did not stop the captain from being recognised by his peers as the best of the lot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fernandes topped the peers’ vote, completing a clean sweep of English football’s big individual awards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18774,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[179,172],"tags":[1836,59],"class_list":["post-18775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-manchester-united","category-epl","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}