He is the heartbeat of Arsenal’s title charge—but now one of the Premier League’s biggest individual awards could slip through Declan Rice’s fingers for a reason nobody saw coming.
And the shock name being pushed for PFA Player of the Year is a familiar face with a stunning second act.
For most of this season, it has felt almost inevitable that Declan Rice would be front and center in any conversation about the PFA Player of the Year award.
After all, Arsenal’s midfield powerhouse has been everywhere.
He has driven Mikel Arteta’s side through a relentless campaign, helping keep the club alive on multiple fronts while once again proving why Arsenal paid £105 million to bring him from West Ham in the summer of 2023. Week after week, Rice has delivered the kind of performances managers dream about—disciplined, explosive, durable, and relentlessly influential.
At a club chasing glory on every front, Rice has looked like the perfect engine.
He has stayed fit. He has stayed available. He has pushed beyond the 50-game mark across all competitions for yet another season. And as Arsenal continue their pursuit of a historic haul of silverware, his influence has become impossible to ignore.
By any normal standard, that should make him the obvious favorite.
But football rarely follows the script people expect.
Because while Rice has been powering Arsenal’s dream season, a stunning outsider story is beginning to shake up the race for one of English football’s biggest individual prizes.
And that name is Granit Xhaka.
Yes, that Granit Xhaka.
The former Arsenal captain, the man once written off by critics and doubted by entire sections of the football world, has returned to the Premier League and completely transformed the mood at Sunderland.
It was supposed to be a respectable chapter.
Instead, it is turning into one of the most unexpected stories of the season.
Sunderland came back to the top flight after a nine-year absence, with many expecting them to spend the campaign simply trying to survive. A club long associated with chaos, heartbreak, and its struggles documented for the world to see, Sunderland were not supposed to be challenging the league’s established order.
Yet here they are.
With nine matches left, they sit 11th in the Premier League, only four points behind seventh-placed Brentford, and talk of a possible push toward Europe no longer sounds ridiculous.
That rise has been fueled by smart recruitment, collective discipline, and one towering presence in the middle of the park.
Xhaka.
At 33 years old, he has returned to the Premier League like a man with unfinished business.
He has not arrived to fade quietly into the background. He has come back snarling into tackles, demanding standards, dragging teammates higher, and knitting everything together in a side that needed steel, calm, and belief.
And that is exactly why former Sunderland striker Don Goodman has made the bold claim that Xhaka deserves to win the 2025-26 PFA Player of the Year award.
Not as a sentimental nod.
Not as a nostalgic gesture.
But because, in his eyes, Xhaka has genuinely been that influential.
Goodman’s argument is simple: the PFA award is voted for by fellow professionals, and no one understands impact better than players who share the pitch with the game’s biggest names every week.
From that perspective, Xhaka’s case becomes far more powerful.
He has not just played well.
He has changed the standards inside the club.
According to Goodman, Sunderland’s promotion-winning group has benefited massively from the mentality Xhaka brings into training and into matches. He is the kind of footballer who demands excellence from himself and then demands it from everyone around him.
That kind of leadership is increasingly rare.
Modern football is packed with talent, pace, and tactical sophistication—but true dressing-room authority, the kind that can lift an entire club, is much harder to find.
And Xhaka, by all accounts, has brought exactly that.
His return to English football has not just been a personal redemption arc. It has been a statement.
A reminder that influence is not always measured by flashy highlights or viral clips.
Sometimes it is measured by structure. By belief. By the standards that turn a newly promoted side from survival candidates into genuine competitors.
That is what makes this debate so fascinating.
Because on pure visibility, trophy race momentum, and star power, Declan Rice looks like the natural headline pick.
He is the centerpiece of one of the league’s strongest teams. He has been a driving force behind Arsenal’s consistency. He represents control, leadership, and world-class midfield authority in a title-chasing machine.
But Xhaka’s story pulls in a different direction.
His case is not built around playing for the best team. It is built around transforming one of the most fragile clubs in the division into one of its most admirable.
That kind of impact has a different kind of weight.
And perhaps the most striking part of Goodman’s take is this: he doesn’t believe Rice himself would have a problem with it.
In fact, he suggested that if Rice looked at the situation rationally, he would understand exactly why fellow professionals might decide that Xhaka deserves the prize.
That claim says a lot about both players.
It reflects the growing respect Rice commands across the game—not just for his performances, but for his character. He is seen as grounded, mature, and team-first. The kind of footballer who would appreciate greatness even when it comes at his own expense.
At the same time, it underlines just how extraordinary Xhaka’s season has apparently been.
For years, Xhaka’s Premier League story was complicated. He was admired by some, criticized heavily by others, and often caught in the emotional crossfire that surrounds high-pressure clubs like Arsenal.
Now, in one of the most unexpected twists of the season, he is being spoken about not as a controversial figure, but as a potential player of the year.
That is a remarkable transformation.
And Sunderland know exactly how valuable he is.
The club protected themselves by handing Xhaka a three-year contract, tying him down until 2028. That deal now looks like a masterstroke. What once may have seemed like an ambitious signing has become one of the smartest moves of the campaign.
For Sunderland supporters, the idea of one of their players winning the PFA award would have sounded absurd not long ago.
Now it feels possible.
Maybe even deserved.
That does not diminish what Declan Rice has done.
Far from it.
Rice remains one of the defining players of the Premier League season. His consistency, durability, and command in midfield have helped Arsenal stay alive in a campaign filled with pressure, expectation, and history. If he wins the award, few will argue.
But football loves a twist.
And this season’s twist may be that while the brightest lights are shining on Arsenal’s title charge, one of the league’s most respected honors could go to a Sunderland midfielder writing the comeback story of his life.
If that happens, it will not be because Rice fell short.
It will be because Granit Xhaka has turned disbelief into admiration, and survival into ambition.
And in a season full of noise, pressure, and headlines, that may be the most astonishing achievement of them all.
Leave a Reply