Debate: Who should win PFA Player of the Year?
The PFA Player of the Year nominations have been announced, with Leicester City trio Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez, and N'Golo Kante, West Ham United's Dimitri Payet, Tottenham Hotspur's Harry Kane, and Arsenal's Mesut Ozil making the list.
theScore's footy team discussed who should win the award:
Armen Bedakian: Chingford is a small town in northeast London, home of Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge. It's a rather ordinary-looking building with a plain white facade and a brown top. The interior is just as simple as the exterior.
Fitting, then, that Harry Kane was born in this suburban locality.
Kane embodies his hometown to a tee. Plain in his football and his demeanor, he's a seemingly simple man with no real vices, and famous for his hunter's instinct and penchant for scoring.
This English international has done what few of his ilk have managed to do, doubly so in recent years - he's stayed consistent. Unlike the firecracker duds who came before him (including Rickie Lambert, Andy Carroll, Gabriel Agbonlahor, and David Nugent), Kane didn't fade into mediocrity after his breakthrough campaign.
Instead, he returned stronger and hungrier than ever. Five braces, one hat trick, and a right foot that tormented goalkeepers across the league, this 22-year-old upstart has remained a loyal servant for both club and country.
Daniel Rouse: The league table doesn't lie: Leicester boasts the best players in the Premier League this season, with the record-breaking Jamie Vardy, tireless N'Golo Kante, and the artistry of Riyad Mahrez fronting the Foxes' pack.
It's Mahrez who's stolen the campaign, though. Vardy's record-breaking goal-scoring antics have etched his name in English folklore, but his prolificacy has waned. Meanwhile, Kante has been a sensation but, as a defensively minded candidate, he's part of a union that's often cruelly overlooked. In Mahrez, there's the consistency that Vardy lacked and the fashionable footwork that is Kante's job to stymie. The Algerian is the poster boy of 2015-16.
Related - Mahrez: From non-league reject to Player of the Year front-runner
Leicester's success has been a team effort, but Mahrez is habitually engaged. Eleven assists and 16 goals make him second to his teammate Vardy in goal involvement, but the midfielder has provided pivotal moments. One of the lasting images of the campaign is when he turned Cesar Azpilicueta inside out in December, before bending beyond Thibaut Courtois. The strike cemented Leicester's claims as a title candidate, while opening the exit door for Jose Mourinho's second tenure at Chelsea.
Carlo Campo: It's been a long time since a player arrived at West Ham whose impact was as widely felt as Dimitri Payet. The Frenchman's inaugural season at Upton Park has been nothing short of sensational, highlighted by his physics-defying free-kicks but ultimately defined by so much more.
From the first matchday of the season, when West Ham achieved a 2-0 victory at Arsenal, it was abundantly clear that, in Payet, West Ham had made one of its soundest investments in recent memory. He set up the fixture's first goal and was so smooth in possession of the ball that supporters of the Hammers could be forgiven for dreaming of the Champions League prematurely.
Eight months later, that dream is still alive, as perennial underachiever West Ham sits only five points back of the Premier League's fourth and final Champions League place. The side's success has come largely thanks to Payet, who has nine goals and eight assists through 25 appearances, and whose wizardry with dead balls makes him arguably the most lethal shooter in Europe when it comes to free-kicks.
That type of revolutionary turnaround is worthy of a PFA Player of the Year award.