Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher revealed their end-of-season awards for the 2025/26 Premier League campaign on the final Monday Night Football of the season.
Between them the Sky Sports pundits picked nine of the same players for their Teams of the Season — but they diverged sharply on the individual prize. Neville named an XI of Raya, Timber, Saliba, Gabriel, O'Reilly, Semenyo, Rice, Fernandes, Silva, Thiago and Haaland. Carragher's XI differed only in two positions: Raya, Nunes, Saliba, Gabriel, O'Reilly, Rice, Silva, Semenyo, Fernandes, Doku and Haaland.
The split matters because Neville and Carragher also disagreed on Player of the Season, and their arguments point to different ideas about what that award should reward. Neville chose Bruno Fernandes, saying his sustained creative level — which Neville grouped with the game-changing standards of Kevin De Bruyne and Thierry Henry — earned him the honour. Carragher picked Declan Rice, arguing that Rice’s performances in the biggest moments, including the Champions League semi-finals against Atletico Madrid, made him the standout.
Neville underlined his certainty over the defensive right side, calling Timber the best right-back in the league by a wide margin despite the player’s recent injury problems. Carragher, who had warned at the start of the season that Manchester City’s full-back options looked weak, explained his own selections by naming Nunes and O’Reilly; he stressed that Nunes functions as a midfield-type who is ever-present, consistent, excellent defensively and assured on the ball. Both men acknowledged Timber has been sidelined at times this season.
Their teams show how small differences in interpretation produce different XIs. Nine shared names reflect broad agreement on who dominated the campaign; the two differing defenders and the choice between Doku and Thiago, and between Fernandes and Rice as player of the year, expose the judgment calls pundits must make when weighing consistency, big-game impact and the context of a player’s club season. Neville pointed to Fernandes’s role in turning around his team after a dire spell "before Christmas," and to victories over Arsenal and City and twice over Liverpool and Chelsea as evidence of his value. Carragher countered that Manchester United’s lack of big-cup runs and absence from European competition meant many of Bruno’s games lacked the highest stakes.
There was an earlier endorsement from another former player. Patrick Vieira, speaking on Sky Sports, chose David Raya as his Premier League Player of the Season, saying Raya had been outstanding from the first game, made crucial saves and had effectively won points for Arsenal across the season. That vote reinforces why both pundits started their XIs with Raya in goal.
The tension in these selections is not a clerical disagreement; it is a clean fault line about criteria. Neville rewarded perseverance and creative influence inside a team that recovered from a poor first half of the season. Carragher prioritised match-defining displays and defensive reliability at the highest level of competition. Both lines of argument are present in the facts: Neville defended Fernandes as matching the Premier League’s great creators, while Carragher highlighted Rice’s decisive form in European semi-final opposition.
What comes next is predictable: the debate will follow supporters and shortlist voters into the summer. The two choices — a creative talisman who helped steady a struggling side and a midfield engine who delivered in headline fixtures — are both defensible. The most consequential immediate outcome is that the Player of the Season discussion will remain contested, framed now by Neville’s insistence on Fernandes’s overall season-long influence and Carragher’s emphasis on Rice’s big-match moments.
For viewers who watched the final Monday Night Football, the takeaway is clear: nine players enjoyed near-universal praise, but the single award still turns on a single question of values, not on consensus. That split, spelled out on Sky Sports by two of its most high-profile analysts, ensures the summer argument will be as lively as the season that produced it.
