With the 2024/25 Premier League campaign coming to a close during the Bank Holiday Weekend, although fans up and down the country had already long known that Liverpool would be lifting their 20th title this summer and that Leicester City, Ipswich Town and Southampton were destined for the drop.
Sunday’s games were the curtain closer on the league places which determined next season’s European adventure and matches lived up to their billing but we will not talk about Aston Villa or Newcastle United here, instead we will move onto end of season happy content – and that means a plethora of variously believed Team of the Season selections.
With a number of players already having jetted off on their summer holidays where additional club, or international commitments are not in play in the coming weeks, the statisticians at Opta have now come up with their annual XI selection and with them taking a data collection and crunching approach to football matters, there XI will ultimately differ from many of the other ones that have been, or will be, produced in the next couple of days.
So, who did they come up with based on the stats that had been compiled over the campaign – in a 4-2-3-1 formation:
Matz Sels (Nottingham Forest)
Trent Alexander-Arnold (Liverpool), William Saliba (Arsenal), Virgil van Dijk (Liverpool), Josko Gvardiol (Manchester City)
Ryan Gravenberch (Liverpool), Declan Rice (Arsenal)
Bryan Mbeumo (Brentford), Matheus Cunha (Wolves), Mohamed Salah (Liverpool)
Alexander Isak (Newcastle United)
Opta have decent reasons for their selections although having finished in top spot, and then runners up, the Liverpool and Arsenal selections speak for themselves but plenty of fans will certainly raise their eyebrows at the remaining five picks.
Many fans may have missed that Sels kept 13 clean sheets this campaign, taking him level with Arsenal’s David Raya and they both shared the Premier League Golden Glove award for 2024/25, and Sels also made 120 saves (only bettered by three goalkeepers in the division).
Gvardiol was the joint highest scoring defender for the campaign, and his attacking statistics from the back had him in second place for ball carry distance and progress, also making the most successful passes and line breaking passes in the final third.
As for Mbeumo, he notched up 20 goals and seven assists for Brentford leaving him third in the goal involvements table, only behind Salah and Isak for given their production, whilst taking a number of club Premier League records along the way.
On the move Cunha helped Wolves not spend a proverbial minute in the top half of the division all campaign, but with 15 goals and six assists he was into their record books purely on the basis they never bettered halfway. 15 goals was a joint Brazilian record though.
Isak’s tally of 23 goals does not tell the full story. He is now the leading Swedish scorer in the PL, and he notched up 50 goals in 76 appearances breaking Alan Shearer’s record to 50 in the process. He also set a new club record for scoring in eight consecutive games, and became only the fourth player in the PL to achieve that.
That will not be enough for some fans who believe they do not warrant their inclusion, but for others they will see it as worthy justification.