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The nominees for the 2025-26 EA SPORTS Premier League Player of the Season have been announced. On 23 May, the prize will be awarded to the most outstanding player in the competition across 2025-26.
The last five winners of the award have played for the eventual Premier League champions that season, with Mohamed Salah winning the most recent POTS award after helping Liverpool to the 2024-25 title. The Egyptian doesn’t make the eight-player list of nominees this time, however.
Erling Haaland is the only previous winner named among the 2025-26 nominees. Can the Manchester City striker become just the sixth player to win the POTS award twice, or will one of the other seven prevail?
Here, we assess the stats behind the nominees’ respective seasons, outlining why they deserve to be in the running for the 2025-26 Premier League Player of the Season award.
Bruno Fernandes
Bruno Fernandes has made the eight-man nominee list for the Premier League Player of the Season for the first time since 2020-21, and rightly so after one of his best campaigns at Manchester United.
Fernandes will end the season as the player with the most assists in the competition. At the time of writing, Fernandes has created 19 goals for United in the Premier League in 2025-26, one off the all-time Premier League seasonal assist record of 20 set by both Thierry Henry in 2002-03 and Kevin De Bruyne in 2019-20.
Ten of his 11 assists have come from set-piece situations, with that just one away from the Premier League seasonal record set by Steven Gerrard in 2013-14.
Fernandes’ chance creation statistics in 2025-26 are far beyond any other player in the Premier League. His current tally of 124 chances created is not only his best in a season since joining United, but it’s the best by any player in the Premier League since Kevin De Bruyne created 136 in 2019-20. He’s created 56 more chances than any other player in the Premier League at the time of writing and leads the competition rankings for expected assists (xA) with 11.3.
No United player has collected the Premier League Player of the Season award since Nemanja Vidic in 2010-11, but the Red Devils have provided winners in a record eight different seasons across six different players. Two of those were won by fellow Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo in back-to-back campaigns in 2006-07 and 2007-08.
Morgan Gibbs-White
Morgan Gibbs-White has enjoyed his best season in front of goal in the Premier League, netting 13 goals in 35 appearances for Nottingham Forest. His previous highest tally came last season, when he scored seven times on the way to helping Forest secure a top-seven finish.
Overall, only five players have accumulated more non-penalty goal involvements than Gibbs-White (16) across the 2025-26 Premier League campaign, while just eight players have created more chances in open play than the Englishman (43).
The attacking midfielder also helped Nottingham Forest reach the semi-final of the UEFA Europa League before being knocked out by Aston Villa.
Gibbs-White is one of only two nominees in 2025-26 that also made the eight-man shortlist for the award last season, alongside Declan Rice.
Should the Forest man win the POTS award this time around, he could become the first player to do so while playing the entire season for a team that finished in the bottom half of the table since Juninho in 1996-97, who did so for relegated Middlesbrough (19th).
Erling Haaland
Erling Haaland has now made the shortlist for the Premier League Player of the Season in three of his four campaigns at Manchester City since joining the club in the summer of 2022, only missing out on being nominated for the award last season.
He looks set to finish as the Premier League’s Golden Boot winner for the third time, with the Norwegian scoring 26 goals in 2025-26 – four ahead of nearest rival Igor Thiago. The only players to have won the Premier League Golden Boot at least three times are Thierry Henry (4), Mohamed Salah (4), Alan Shearer (3) and Harry Kane (3).
Keeping up his remarkable consistency in front of goal, Haaland has converted at least 20% of his shots for the fourth successive Premier League season (21.0%), but he’s also helped create goals for teammates. With eight assists in 2025-26, he’s equalled his best ever tally in a Premier League campaign (also 8 in 2022-23) and created as many goals as he did in the previous two seasons combined (5 in 2023-24 and 3 in 2024-25).
Haaland is looking to win the award for a second time after previously being named the Premier League Player of the Season in 2022-23. Only five players have won the award twice since it began in 1994-95: Henry, Cristiano Ronaldo, Nemanja Vidic, Kevin De Bruyne and Salah.
Gabriel Magalhães
Gabriel Magalhães has played a big role in making Arsenal one of the most defensively resolute Premier League sides we’ve seen in recent seasons.
Conceding just 26 goals in 36 games in 2025-26, Arsenal could become one of just 31 sides (out of 686 in Premier League history) to concede fewer than 30 goals in a Premier League season. Just 19 of those goals have come when Gabriel has been on the pitch.
One of the strongest defenders in the Premier League across 2025-26, of the 57 defenders to have been involved in 200+ duels this season, only four have a superior duel success rate to Gabriel’s 65.9%.
Only one Brazilian has previously won the Premier League Player of the Season award, which began in 1994-95: Juninho in 1996-97.
Gabriel will also hope to become just the fifth different defender to win the POTS award, after Nemanja Vidic (2), Rúben Dias, Virgil van Dijk and Vincent Kompany.
David Raya
David Raya has already secured the Premier League Golden Glove award for the third successive season (he shared it with Matz Sels in 2024-25), with 18 clean sheets kept and two matchdays left to play.
A crucial player in Arsenal’s brilliant season, the Gunners’ goalkeeper is the only player to have started every single Premier League game for Mikel Arteta’s side in 2025-26, not missing a single minute of their league campaign.
Should he keep a clean sheet in both of Arsenal’s final two games against Burnley (H) and Crystal Palace (A), he’ll be the first goalkeeper to have kept 20 clean sheets in a season since Alisson and Ederson both did so in 2021-22. If he does achieve that, Raya will also set a new club record by an Arsenal goalkeeper in a single Premier League campaign.
He may be the only goalkeeper in the Premier League this season to face fewer than three shots on target per 90 minutes (2.4) and therefore called into action less often than any other, but he’s capable of making superb match-winning saves. The brilliant stop from Mateus Fernandes in their 1-0 win at West Ham on 10 May a fine case in point.
Raya will hope to become just the second goalkeeper to win the Premier League Player of the Season award, and the first in 30 years, after Man Utd’s Peter Schmeichel collected the accolade in 1995-96.
Declan Rice
Declan Rice is set to end his third season as an Arsenal player, and he’s earned a spot on the eight-man shortlist for the Premier League Player of the Season in all three of them.
A reliable figure in the Gunners’ midfield, no outfielder has played more league minutes for Arsenal this season than Rice (3,009), with the England international missing just one of their 36 league matches in 2025-26.
As Arsenal’s most creative player in 2025-26, Rice has created 63 chances for his teammates and has accumulated a team-high 6.9 expected assists (xA). Much of his creative threat comes from his set-piece delivery – no player has a higher xA total from corners and indirect free-kicks than Rice in the Premier League this season (3.2).
Rice has remained just as essential for Mikel Arteta’s side with and without the ball. He leads all Arsenal players for possession regains per 90 minutes (5.2) and has averaged 80 touches per 90 in the Premier League this season, the most involved that Rice has ever been in a single top-flight league campaign.
The last Arsenal player to win the Premier League Player of the Season award was Thierry Henry in 2005-06, but with Rice among three Gunners players to make the shortlist this time around, that drought might be about to come to an end.
As one of only two English players in the shortlist, Rice has a chance of becoming just the second Englishman to win the Premier League Player of the Season award since 2016-17, after Phil Foden’s victory in 2023-24.
Antoine Semenyo
Antoine Semenyo began the season at Bournemouth, where he was involved in 13 goals in 20 appearances (10 goals, 3 assists) before moving to Manchester City in January.
The forward enjoyed a fantastic start to life as a City player, scoring in five of his first eight Premier League appearances for Pep Guardiola’s side. Overall, he’s scored six times in the league for City since joining, taking his seasonal goal tally to 16 with a further four assists.
Only one previous winner of the Premier League Player of the Season accolade has represented two different clubs in their award-winning season. Dwight Yorke played once for Aston Villa in 1998-99 before moving to Manchester United and winning a famous treble in his first campaign with the Red Devils.
Much of Semenyo’s threat comes from travelling with the ball at pace. No player has been involved in more goals following a ball carry than him in the Premier League this season (7), with one of those coming on the opening day of the campaign for Bournemouth vs Liverpool, when the Ghanaian forward travelled a sensational 52.4 metres with the ball at his feet before scoring.
Igor Thiago
After a hugely frustrating, injury-hit debut campaign last time out, Igor Thiago has been one of the stories of the season with his goalscoring feats at Brentford in 2025-26.
With 22 goals to his name, he’s broken the records for both the highest scoring Brentford player and the highest scoring Brazilian player in a single Premier League campaign. Those goals helped him earn his international debut with Brazil in March.
He’s scored 42.3% of Brentford’s Premier League goals this season, which have pushed his side to the cusp of qualifying for European competition for the first time in their history.
Eight of his league goals have been penalties (36.4%), missing just one of his nine attempts – only eight players in Premier League history have taken more penalties in a single season than the Brentford forward in 2025-26.
Incredibly hard-working off the ball, Thiago leads the league rankings for both high pressures across the pitch (1,846) and those specifically in the final third (860).
The striker is the only player to have won the Premier League Player of the Month on more than one occasion in 2025-26 (November and January), the first of which made him the first Brentford player to win the award in the history of the competition.
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