Thibaut Courtois’ astonishing PFA exclusion explained

The PFA team of the year was announced yesterday, and while four Chelsea players made it into the team, several more can feel hard done by to have missed out.

Gary Cahill, David Luiz, N’Golo Kante and Eden Hazard made it into the final team, but Thibaut Courtois did not.

The Belgian stopper has had an excellent season – perhaps his best in Blue – but David de Gea was instead selected between the sticks.

The reason for this is simple. Those selecting the team get “fatigue” from picking too many players from the same team, and look to spice up their choices with players from a few different sides.

Given almost all the voters will have their team made up of Chelsea and Spurs players, this doesn’t give much room for variety, and goalkeeper is the position that typically the voters use to add a little variety to their team. It’s happened plenty of times before, and has happened again, with David de Gea beating Thibaut on merit of being a more interesting choice rather than having had a better season.

Chelsea News