Players Snubbed by the PFA Player of the Year Award

The PFA Player of the Year is meant to be football's ultimate peer endorsement, a verdict from those who know the game best. Yet its history is littered with baffling decisions, split votes and positional bias that have left some of the sport's greatest names with a lot less silverware in this particular category than their careers deserved.

Here are ten players whose PFA Player of the Year record doesn't remotely reflect how good they actually were.

10) David Silva – Manchester City

David Silva was the heartbeat of Manchester City's greatest era, orchestrating attacks with a grace and intelligence few could match. He won five Premier League titles and was the creative engine behind City's dominance.

Yet Silva never won the PFA Player of the Year. Like several of his City teammates over the years, he was a victim of split voting and the award's long-standing tendency to favour more explosive, goalscoring talents over the quiet architects of a title-winning team.

9) Sergio Aguero – Manchester City

Sergio Aguero scored 184 Premier League goals for Manchester City, won five league titles, and delivered one of the most iconic moments in Premier League history with his last-minute title winner in 2012. Yet he never won the PFA Player of the Year.

Despite being one of the most lethal strikers the league has ever seen, Aguero was consistently overlooked in favour of midfielders and forwards from rival clubs. His consistency and big-game pedigree arguably deserved at least one gong.

8) Paul Scholes – Manchester United

Paul Scholes spent 19 seasons at Manchester United, winning 11 Premier League titles and two Champions Leagues, and was lauded by peers like Zinedine Zidane and Xavi as one of the finest midfielders of his generation. Yet he never won the PFA Player of the Year.

There's a popular claim, repeated often enough that it's become footballing folklore, that Scholes was never once selected for the PFA Team of the Year either. That's not quite true: he made the team in 2003 and 2007. But for a player of his stature and longevity to be named just twice, against contemporaries like Steven Gerrard, who holds the all-time record with eight selections, still says something about how undervalued he was by the peer-voted system relative to his standing in the game.

7) David Beckham – Manchester United

David Beckham's celebrity status often overshadowed his footballing brilliance, but in the treble-winning season of 1998-99, he was unplayable. Coming back from his sending-off at the 1998 World Cup, Beckham produced arguably his best individual season, delivering the kind of crosses and dead-ball deliveries few have matched before or since.

Beckham won the PFA Young Player of the Year in 1996-97 and finished as runner-up for the senior award that same year. The top prize, like for so many of his United teammates across that era, remained just out of reach.

6) Neville Southall – Everton

Only two goalkeepers have ever won the PFA Player of the Year: Pat Jennings in 1976 and Peter Shilton in 1978. Neville Southall arguably should have been the third.

In Everton's title-winning season of 1984-85, Southall was widely regarded as one of the finest goalkeepers in the world. He was named the Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year in 1985, but his fellow professionals never once voted him the league's leading player.

Everton captain Kevin Ratcliffe put it simply: "When you've got a keeper like that in your team you can gain an extra fourteen points." It still wasn't enough to overcome the PFA's long-standing bias against shot-stoppers.

5) Peter Schmeichel – Manchester United

Between 1991 and 1999, Peter Schmeichel revolutionised what it meant to be a Premier League goalkeeper: his command of the box and shot-stopping were unlike anything seen before. Sir Alex Ferguson called his £500,000 signing fee "the bargain of the century."

Yet despite maintaining that level throughout his United career, Schmeichel never received PFA recognition with the top individual prize. He was named in the PFA Team of the Year just once, a striking statistic for a goalkeeper many still consider the greatest the Premier League has seen.

4) Didier Drogba – Chelsea

Didier Drogba was the Premier League's ultimate big-game striker, yet the PFA trophy eluded him at his peak on multiple occasions. In 2006-07, he scored 33 goals and won the FA Cup, but lost out to Cristiano Ronaldo. In 2009-10, he fired Chelsea to the double with 29 league goals, a campaign that looked every bit like a winning one, only to be pipped by Wayne Rooney.

Drogba claimed two Premier League Golden Boots across his career, but the PFA crown remained a persistent blind spot for a forward who terrorised defences like few others.

3) Yaya Toure – Manchester City

In 2013-14, Yaya Toure became only the second midfielder in Premier League history to score 20 league goals in a single season, the driving force behind Manchester City's title triumph and a midfield colossus who combined defensive steel with devastating attacking output.

He finished third in the PFA voting, behind winner Luis Suarez. Former teammate Micah Richards later said: "Yaya should have won it, 100 per cent." Toure himself was openly disappointed at missing out.

2) Frank Lampard – Chelsea

Frank Lampard is one of the greatest midfielders in Premier League history, scoring over 200 goals from midfield, winning three league titles, and setting the standard for consistency over more than a decade. Yet he never won the PFA Player of the Year.

Thierry Henry, a two-time winner himself, has said he found it a genuine surprise that Lampard was never crowned. Lampard was named in the PFA Team of the Year on five separate occasions, but the top individual prize always eluded him.

1) Steven Gerrard – Liverpool

Gerrard is the one entry on this list with an asterisk: he did win the PFA Player of the Year outright in 2006, off the back of Liverpool's FA Cup-winning "Miracle of Istanbul" era, and holds the all-time record for PFA Team of the Year selections with eight. He's not a career-long snub in the way the rest of this list is.

But 2009 might be the single biggest one-season snub in the award's history. When Ryan Giggs won the PFA Player of the Year that year, having started just 12 Premier League games all season, the football world did a genuine double-take. Gerrard, by contrast, was producing arguably the finest football of his career, dragging Liverpool to within a whisker of a first league title in 19 years with 13 goals from 26 league starts.

Former Liverpool captain John Barnes didn't mince his words: "I was surprised to see that Ryan Giggs had won the Player of the Year award." Gerrard's own teammate Pepe Reina was even blunter: "When it got out that Ryan Giggs had been given Player of the Year by the PFA, well, it was fair because he's played for a long time, but for me, Stevie was the one." That year's award felt more like a lifetime-achievement nod to Giggs than recognition of the season's actual best performer, and it's the closest thing to a genuine injustice on this list.

Who Are the Nominees for the 2026 PFA Player of the Year?

The six nominees for the 2026 men's PFA Player of the Year were Declan Rice, Gabriel Magalhaes and David Raya of Arsenal, Bruno Fernandes of Manchester United, and Erling Haaland and Rayan Cherki of Manchester City.

Arsenal's trio were recognised for their roles in the club's Premier League title win, while Fernandes broke the Premier League's single-season assist record with 21. Fernandes went on to win the award, announced at the PFA Awards ceremony in Manchester.