Robin van Persie And Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain Nominated For PFA Awards

April means that the Players Football Association, or PFA, nominees are announced, and Arsenal have a player in each category. In the Player of the Year, Robin van Persie joins Wayne Rooney, Sergio Aguero, David Silva, Joe Hart and Scott Parker. In the PFA Young Player of the Year, for players under 24, Arsenal's Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain joins Aguero, Danny Welbeck, Daniel Sturridge, Gareth Bale and Kyle Walker.

van Persie has to be the favourite to win the Player of the Year award; with 27 goals and 10 assists in 33 games he's had a far superior season to every single player in the Premier League, whether nominated or not. David Silva could've offered fierce resistance, but tailed after January, while Wayne Rooney will likely be the only competitor for van Persie. Rooney has 24 goals this season, but only 4 assists. Both have been excellent, but, bias aside, van Persie should be the clear winner.

Oxlade-Chamberlain being nominated for Young Player of the Year is odd, to say the least. He's played just 449 minutes of Premier League football, and, though he has been very good, his best performance for Arsenal this season was in the Champions League (though, that didn't stop Bale from winning the PFA Player of the Year award last year). One could argue that there are more deserving candidates at Arsenal: Alex Song, Theo Walcott and Wojciech Szczesny have all had better seasons than Oxlade-Chamberlain and all qualify for the award. The likely winner will be Sergio Aguero, who is the only candidate to have been nominated for both awards. If either Gareth Bale, Kyle Walker or Scott Parker win one of the PFA awards, footballers are even more dumb than I thought.