Personally, I always think these threads on Bale and the PFA award are always missing some highly relevant factors.
Firstly, the PFA award has always been abit of a lottery and is not always a great reflection of who the best player over the course of the season actually is. The most obvious reason for this is that the voting is carried out fairly early on in the season which misses alot of the actual football played during the season. Not sure on the exact deadline but I recall in the past it was nearly always done and dusted by the midway point of the season. It's always a better reflection of who was playing well from August until December when Bale was one of the country's top performers.
I'm not sure if the PFA have remedied this but this always used to be the case and is shown in some notable past winners and the fact Bale won it suggests to me they have not. I dare anyone to look at the top six players for any year and find someone who was not turning it on up until December. Best example I can recall is the cluster of Newcastle players in 95/96, with the eventual winner being Les Ferdinand and Eric not featuring at all, when he was in most people's eyes the player of the year for that season. Teddy in 00/01 is another good example of a player who was fantastic for half the season but then tailed off significantly. The trend is compelling and is a much better explanation than players voting for Bale because they were taken in by media hype, although I daresay this would have played a part.
You also have to bear in mind that Bale had a very good end to the season in 2009/10 and this will be in some of the players who voted minds when you add his early season form on top of it. That's also going to have some impact on the way the PFA made their decision.
Secondly, the PFA award is an award voted for by players and let's face it I daresay they all have different reasons and criteria for voting and the winners of the award quite often don't parallel with who the fans, media or pundits think is most deserving. Mark Hughes won the award in 88/89 and by his standards it was not one of his best season's for United. I can remember alot of the media explaining this one as Hughesie receiving alot of votes because he gave defenders the hardest game they had that season or because they had respect for how he handled the treatment they dished out and such like. It's an indication of how factors different to what other groups think are relevant can influence who is the ultimate winner.
Similarly Pallister won it in 91/92 and I reckon there was a fair argument he was not our player of the season, let alone the top player in the country. The truth is players have different reasons for handng their vote a certain way than pundits, fans or the media. That's always been the case with the PFA award.
For me, Bale winning the PFA award is actually quite understandable when you realise when the votes are made and who are making the votes. There's always been winners like him throughout the history of the award. It's never been an accurate barometer of who actually was the best in the country for the year for these reasons.
I could be wrong on when the votes are made but if that has altered it's certainly a recent development. I've no idea why the voting could not be done much closer to the end of the actual season but like I said there have always been anomalies with the PFA award which make it a very different award to most others.
Most of the arguments made in this thread are coming from the standpoint of the whole season and are also reflecting the type of criteiria which are important to fans of the game. It's a decent debate but misses the point of what the PFA award is for me. It's an award decided by players and they have different reasons for giving their vote than assist and goal stats, half of which are probably not available to them when they make their decision.
