With the domestic football season now approaching its conclusion, we have picked out our top XI from across 2020-21 season of English Football.
In a cramped season, the battles for a spot in my top eleven has been incredibly close with so many players worthy of a place in this XI, but ultimately 11 players were just more deserving of a spot in my top 2020-21 English Football XI.
I have also singled one manager as the best manager of this season after they delivered stunning success for their club, which not many would of likely predicted to be the case at the start of this season.
Now here is my 2020-21 Top 2020-21 English Football XI with full in-depth explanations below.
Goalkeeper
In recent seasons, I have personally felt that there has been one clear obvious stand-out goalkeeper but this season has genuinely been tougher than I thought in terms of selection.
I could of easily selected Manchester City’s Ederson or Chelsea Women’s Ann-Katrina Berger purely on overall consistency, or Chelsea’s Edouard Mendy who has been excellent for a rookie campaign in English Football.
Aston Villa’s Emiliano Martinez though just has the edge in my selection because after largely spending his Arsenal career in the shadows of top goalkeepers, he has been a huge revelation for Villa this season with 15 clean sheets.
In fact, Martinez has actually had a positive impact on Villa’s defence because he hasn’t be afraid unlike many goalkeepers to get stuck in defensively if required whilst maintaining his key role in goal.
On that note, I am therefore more impressed by what Martinez has achieved this season more than any other goalkeeper, because he has shown that spending several years as a second or even third choice goalie at Arsenal won’t define his career.
Defence
Defence has been quite difficult to decide this season because I personally don’t feel like there have been many stand-out individual defensive performances, yet I definitely cannot ignore Joao Cancelo because of his overall quality for City this campaign.
Cancelo has just been consistently excellent across both fullback positions this season with regular contributions in defence and specifically attacks, as evidenced by the fact that no foreign Premier League defender has produced more shots this season than the Portuguese defender.
It is therefore impossible to not name Cancelo in this XI given his overall consistency and the same can be said for Ruben Dias who has simply been super consistent in City’s central defence, especially in terms of interceptions and clearances which underline how excellent they’ve both been for City all season.
It is worth mentioning though that neither player feature high up on the Premier League overall statistics this season across defensive and attacking qualities, which is great credit to City’s overall performance.
As for the second central defender pick, I have been impressed by Leicester’s Wesley Fofana and Aston Villa’s Ezri Konsa to the extent that they will both fill the two remaining defensive blocks in this XI.
Fofana has been incredibly consistent for Leicester this season across all defensive qualities as evidenced by the fact that he was Leicester’s top defender across five defensive qualities including tackling and interceptions, yet Konsa has been the more attacking defender in terms of creating opportunities and goals out of defence for Villa.
Fofana and Konsa therefore were incredibly difficult to separate both on performance and statistics but I am going for Fofana purely on overall defensive consistency to fill the second central defence spot, particularly because Konsa has occasionally played as fullback so he would fit best in this XI at fullback.
Midfield
This selection was relatively straight forward as we start with Manchester United’s Bruno Fernandes, who has just taken the league by storm in his first full season of English Football.
Considering that he has produced more goals and assists this season than any other midfielder in the men’s English game, Fernandes has been hugely influential in Utd’s attacking improvement and at the heart of most of their chances with his creative passing play.
You would be hard done to find any reason to not include him in this XI because he has simply been outstanding in midfield this season overall, not just for Utd but also across the Premier League as well.
On that note, Fran Kirby has been in similar form for Chelsea Women with 25 goals and over ten assists in all competitions, which is impressive given that she has managed to hold her own in a fierce Chelsea attack and was joint top goalscorer in UEFA Women’s Champions League (UWCL).
Kirby’s success in particular is even more stunning if you consider that she missed the last few months of last season after suffering from Pericarditis, yet she has shown real steel to recover and help deliver a domestic treble plus a first UWCL Final where they lost to Barcelona.
As for the last midfield position, I have been quietly impressed with Leicester’s Youri Tielemans because he has been genuinely one of the underrated midfielders of this season, particularly given his all-round ability to drop deep and help the defence out as well as create plenty of opportunities when on the attack.
On that note, Tielemans feels like he has the potential to be the next Kevin De Bruyne because I felt that the latter has dropped in consistency this season, whereas Tielemans has shown excellent improvement which was evident in his confident display to nick the winner to gift Leicester their first FA Cup title in a nervy final.
I however felt that apart from Fernandes and Kirby, there hasn’t been a stand-out midfielder this season because Chelsea’s Mason Mount, West Ham’s Jesse Lingard and Arsenal Women’s Caitlin Foord could of taken Tielemans’ spot, yet I felt that Tielemans had the edge purely on overall improvement this season.
Forward
In a season in which several individual strikers have enjoyed outstanding seasons, it felt difficult to not name Brentford’s Ivan Toney in the squad because he has just been excellent with over 30 goals and ten assists in the Sky Bet Championship.
We must acknowledge that this is Toney’s first season in the second tier too, which makes his performances all the more impressive because he has simply been incredibly dangerous up front even compared to several Premier League strikers.
Chelsea Women’s Sam Kerr also makes the list after enjoying an excellent season in which she netted 27 goals in 35 appearances across all competitions, whilst also providing 11 assists which underlined just how exceptional she has been this campaign.
In fact, Kerr is the first player to snatch the WSL Golden Boot from Arsenal’s Vivianne Miedema for the first time since 2017-18 season, which is further proof of just how exceptional Kerr has been this season to justify her spot in this XI.
As for my third striker, it was a tough decision because Mohamed Salah, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Ollie Watkins have all enjoyed excellent campaigns, yet Tottenham’s Harry Kane has been just exceptional in his gameplay this season.
With 33 goals and 17 assists in all competitions, Kane has just been consistently reliable for Tottenham this season in terms of creating goals when not finishing opportunities himself even though he has been let down by his teammates overall with little success in return other than Golden Boot and Playmaker awards.
We also cannot mention how influential Kane has been this season his partnership with Son Heung-min, as the duo broke thee record for most goals/assist combination this season with some excellent play and finishing between the pair
With over 90 goals scored between them, I definitely cannot think of three more amazing strikers than these three who have just been utterly exceptional all season.
Manager
This is always a debatable pick because you could judge solely on achievements in terms of trophies or success compared to last season, which would put likes of Pep Guardiola, Brendan Rogers and David Moyes in the mix.
I however have selected Emma Hayes as my pick for manager of the year because compared to all other managers in the English professional game, Hayes has simply been exceptional as Chelsea Women manager this season with a domestic treble and a first UWCL Final.
Chelsea statistically this season lost just three of 38 matches in all competitions under Hayes and reached a maiden UWCL Final, which just underlines how unbelievable a season she has had in charge of the Blues on top of domestic success and broken various records.
It is also down to Hayes’ managerial quality in extracting the best out of her players whilst also balancing game time across all competitions that Chelsea dominated the two main WSL awards, with Sam Kerr and Ann-Katrin Berger winning WSL Golden Boot and Glove awards respectively.
Hayes has also impressed me in how she has conducted herself on and off pitch amidst recurring rumours linking her to other managerial positions, as she kept Chelsea’s players motivated to achieve success and calmly batted away speculation around the idea of her departing to go and manage a club in the men’s game.
We also cannot deny that Hayes has achieved success that very few modern English managers could do, which made it even easier for me to single the 44 year-old as the stand-out manager of this season.
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