The last word on the PFA awards

The PFA Player and Young Player of the Year Award winners were announced, and they were as predictable as they were wrong. I understand that footballers are a bit dim, prone to hype and sentimental, but surely there's an argument to give them at least a fighting chance of getting this right by asking them at the end of the season. You know, when it's relevant.

Not that that would have affected their choice of Player of the Year, which went to Manchester United's Ryan Giggs. This is wrong. That's not to say Giggs isn't or wasn't a wonderful player - he is. But the fact is he only won this award because he never won it before, i.e. on the many, many occasions he deserved it. Steven Gerrard, and Frank Lampard (who didn't even make the shortlist) can feel rightly aggrieved.

So too can Stephen Ireland, the Manchester City midfielder who missed out to Ashley Young of Aston Villa, presumably because of the timing of the vote. Young had an excellent first half of the season, completing an impressive achievement by picking up his third Player of the Month award in a calendar year.

But his form has dipped appallingly since then, and his being rewarded has exposed the ludicrous nature of this voting process. Ireland has had a stormer this season and arguably would have been close to Young even before Christmas. But the fact that Young has been unable to rescue an ailing Villa side while Ireland has continued to shine in a poor city side speaks volumes.