Should Gareth Bale have been able to win both player of the year awards?

The awards ceremony for the PFA’s player of the year and young player of the year took place in London last night. Gareth Bale was the big winner of the night scooping both the Player of the year and Young player of the year awards becoming only the third player ever to win both awards in the same season.

        He has been in dazzling form this season often singlehandedly dragging his Tottenham team to wins scoring 19 Premier league goals from midfield. His performances this season certainly make him a worthy candidate for the accolades, however whilst everyone talks about whether Bale was the right choice to win the awards, maybe we should be looking at whether it should be allowed for a player to win both awards.

        Gareth Bale became a two time player of the year adding to the player of the year award he won in 2010-2011. However there have been some complaints in the press that a player should not be allowed to be nominated in both categories and the opportunity should be given to another young player if a player is already senior category.

        The Welshman beat Luis Suarez and Van Persie to the senior award who finished second and third respectively whilst he also defeated Christian Benteke and Eden Hazard in the young player category.

However there have been some complaints that there are young players that deserve the recognition of the accolade and Bale should not have been able to win this award as he already had a nomination for the senior award.  This is something that could definitely be looked at in future years as despite how impressive Bale has been this season there have been many other young players who have had great seasons and would have been deserving of the award.

It would certainly make the award nominations much fairer if the players are only able to make the shortlist for one or the other categories. Although this may not be possible due to the logistics involved in terms of collecting nominations in each category however it would certainly appease the many fans who feel aggrieved that their favourite players weren’t given the opportunity to challenge for the awards.

Despite these grievances though everyone must accept that Bale has had a fantastic season and this has been recognised by his fellow professionals in the game and he now holds the title of player and young player of the year until next seasons close.