It was a mostly bleak night for Liverpool at the PFA Awards yesterday evening . And that's not just because it was a gray and rainy August evening in Manchester.
There was some success for Virgil van Dijk , who made the Team of the Year. But Mohamed Salah was snubbed for a second consecutive season.
For a player who has made no secret of his drive to win individual accolades in the past, this will come as a blow. Surprisingly, Sadio Mane has actually made it into more PFA Team of the Year sides than Salah (four versus three), who has every reason to feel overlooked by his fellow professionals.
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Much like at Ballon d'Or level, Salah has been a victim of his specific type of greatness. His numbers are so incredible because he posts them every year, without fail — each individual season would still be the best campaign of most players' lives, but by his own standards they are not exceptional.
And so whenever there is the slightest of dips, Salah falls off the radar for individual recognition. If there were a team of the last decade, he would surely be the top pick, but season-by-season accolades are harder to come by.
And it's not just Salah who has a right to feel a little put out. Liverpool strung together a really strong campaign as it looked to end the Jurgen Klopp era on a high, but its role in the title race would not be apparent to anyone studying the Team of the Year.
The final Premier League table saw three teams finish between 82 and 91 points, followed by a steep drop-off to Aston Villa on 68 in fourth. In the meantime, Liverpool also won a domestic cup, while remaining in the hunt for a quadruple until deep into 2024.
Yet Van Dijk is the sole representative in a team that contains four Manchester City players and five Arsenal stars. It's a reflection of how the new Premier League order is viewed: there are the "champions" and the "challengers", and Liverpool has slipped out of both groups in the public perception.
In fairness, Manchester City and Arsenal obviously have a lot of good players. Man-for-man, there are no glaring mistakes in the Team of the Year — Alisson is better than David Raya and Trent Alexander-Arnold is better than Kyle Walker, but neither necessarily deserved inclusion after injury-impacted campaigns.
More than ever, Liverpool's success seemed to come from the collective as opposed to truly brilliant individual seasons. Perhaps Alexis Mac Allister deserved more of a mention, and the gap between his campaign and that of Declan Rice is far smaller than the media (and respective price tags) would generally have you believe, but there's no denying he would have been a surprise inclusion.
And in a way, Liverpool won't want to change that under Arne Slot . He will also emphasize the importance of the collective.
But with collective success comes individual honors. Just look at 2020, when Liverpool got five players into the Team of the Year after winning the Premier League title.
That will be added fuel for the squad this season. Liverpool can silence critics on an individual and collective level by breaking up the battle between Manchester City and Arsenal at the top — it is still the last side to stop Pep Guardiola from winning the title, and it's time to remind people of that. This time next year, Van Dijk should not be the only one receiving plaudits.
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