Arsenal: 4 candidates for player of the season

It’s now time for the much-maligned international break, just as Arsenal have ten matches standing between them and a return to the Champions League next season.

28 matches have passed and so much has happened that you would need a documentary film crew to have captured it all. Ah, that’s right, there is one.

To be in the position they find themselves in after all that had gone on over the summer, at the start of the season and even in the middle of it, Arsenal deserve huge credit for. The race for the top four looks like it will go down to the wire and there are no runaway favourites, but it’s still within sight.

Across the season there have been numerous highs, as well as plunging lows.

Arsenal: 4 candidates for Player of the Season as Mikel Arteta’s side remain in the hunt for the Premier League top four places

Three defeats to start the season saw Arsenal sit rock bottom of the table, while exciting and commanding wins elsewhere have offered more than a glimpse into this team’s future. And, along the way, there have been some outstanding individual campaigns.

While it won’t be known for a while who will secure the Player of the Season gong, if the award were to be handed out now there are plenty of candidates choose from.

Best of all is that while some people may have their personal picks, if someone else were to win it there would be no complaints. This is a squad brimming with talent and always improving, but based on events so far there are some candidates who are in line on account of the seasons they’ve had.

Four right now are probably leading the pack.

1. Bukayo Saka

There isn’t much debate about this, is there?

Across the season so far, in order to be in the reckoning one needs to have maintained a certain level throughout. Of course, with ten matches left to play in the season there is time for others to enter the reckoning who perhaps started the season slower.

Someone who has been on form across the 28 games is Bukayo Saka. Tasked with taking his game to the next level and adding goals to his already glowing repertoire, the Star Boy has responded.

To have blown everyone away and carried the team as he did last season along with Emile Smith Rowe, expecting him to lift his standard further came with little doubt. However, to have developed as he has physically, become so tactical astute on the right side and keep providing goal threat is a credit to this magnificent young man.

Just as he has already there will be a hugely important role for Saka to play (ten 90 minute matches, you’d imagine) – for him to keep dazzling everyone until the end of the season.

Without doubt should be in the running.

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