SO the only players in the running for PFA Player of the Year are ones who stick the ball in the net.

Alan Shearer, James Beattie, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Paul Scholes, Gianfranco Zola and Thierry Henry are all worthy contenders after brilliant personal seasons.

But are we forgetting there is another end of the pitch which is equally important and where it takes the same level of skill and technical ability to frustrate people like the above six.

Defenders, goalkeepers and defensive midfielders must be desperate to vote for the unsung heroes like themselves instead of forwards they often regard as the showboaters of the game.

Stoppers like Sol Campbell, Sammy Hyppia and Mikkel Silvestre have performed as well as any of the players nominated for this year's award but they don't get a look in because they don't ply their trade at the end which attracts all the media hype and hysteria.

For my money there hasn't been a better player in the Premiership than Gudni Bergsson but if he even got a mention, let alone a nomination, there would be outrage.

Gudni Bergsson? Player of the Year? It's like something out of a Peter Kay script. But why shouldn't the nearly 38-year-old get it?

He has been as quick as any centre half in the division (and a lot quicker than he was a few years ago).

He has been brilliant individually and within the team. And he has done it in a struggling side where it is ten times harder.

I'd like to have seen how Rio Ferdinand and Sol Campbell would have looked in his place this season. Certainly no better.

Who else has had Shearer, Henry, van Nistelrooy, Michael Owen and Nicolas Anelka in their pocket this season? And who else has been quick enough to give Wayne Rooney two yards start and catch him? And just like Shearer at the other end of the field, Bergsson is so easy to play alongside he makes his partners look great. Is it a coincidence that Florent Laville, Bruno N'Gotty, Mike Whitlow and Colin Hendry have all looked a revelation alongside him. I don't think so.

He is a team player in a team game and the fact that he plays in boring defence for one of the smaller and less glamorous clubs who are lucky to get 20 seconds coverage at the end of the TV highlights show should have nothing to do with it.