TalkSport pundit picks London-based player over Liverpool defender in Team of the Year

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Andy Robertson has had another fantastic season for Liverpool.

Tony Cascarino has controversially picked Crystal Palace defender, Patrick Van Aanholt, over Liverpool’s Andy Robertson in his Premier League Team of the Year.

The former striker suggested that Van Aanholt has done a ‘tad better’ than the Liverpool player, who he believes has had an ‘outstanding’ season but isn’t worthy of making his final XI. 

If this current global health pandemic is cleared up and the season can resume then Robertson will be aiming to add those final two wins to Liverpool’s season so they can be crowned champions of England.

Speaking to GameDay Breakfast on talkSPORT (15/03/20 at 8:30 am), Cascarino did pick Trent Alexander-Arnold and Virgil van Dijk is in his TOTY, but he left out Robertson.

“I have gone for Trent at right-back,” Cascarino told talkSPORT. “I think that is the easiest one [to pick] of anyone in the backline. I think Van Dijk is also the obvious one.

“I have thrown a spanner in the works at left-back. Left-back is a tougher one. Andy Robertson has been outstanding for Liverpool.

“And I kept thinking, ‘who would I say has done equally as well or maybe even a tad better?’. I went for Van Aanholt at Palace. His season has just been pretty spectacular for me. Him and Gary Cahill have done brilliantly at Palace.”

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Given how Liverpool have performed this season, it could be argued that more than half of their team is deserving of being named in the Team of the Year. The obvious ones without a doubt are the likes of TAA, Van Dijk and Sadio Mane.

But whilst many of them will make the Premier League’s TOTY, it has to be questioned who will walk away with the Player of the Year gong.

There have been calls for Jordan Henderson to receive the award at the end of the season, whilst Mane has perhaps been their best player in the attacking third. Added with that, Van Dijk has set the bar so high that his high-quality performances now look like the norm. Either way, it’s going to be a difficult task.