Who is Liverpool’s Player of the Season?

It’s safe to say that Liverpool‘s season has been perhaps the most dramatic of the Premier League era; not so much for what’s gone on on the pitch – though mercifully for Kopites the actual football is now the main talking point – but for the soap opera off it.

First came the introduction of Roy Hodgson as replacement for the popular but flawed Rafael Benitez. The veteran Englishman was given a warm reception from the Anfield faithful but things soon turned sour as the team struggled to adapt to his methods, with a series of soulless defeats consigning them to the bottom half of the table, while the man himself saw fit to openly deride players and fans in his astonishingly defeatist and unambitious press conferences. But even that farce was to be overshadowed by the ownership saga, in which Tom Hicks and George Gillett desperately tried to maintain their status as the most evil owners in the Premier League by taking a legitimate takeover to the High Court, who promptly laughed them out of town, allowing the much more benign (and seemingly cash rich) Fenway Sports Group to step in and inject a bit of optimism into the club for the first time in years.

Then came Hodgson’s inevitable sacking and the appointment of Kenny Dalglish, who has exceeded all expectations by not only fundamentally changing the way the team plays, but getting the results to justify the shift in emphasis from reacting to taking the fight to opponents. European football now seems certain to be played on Merseyside next season when at the turn of the year a top half finish seemed hopelessly optimistic for the Reds. Key to the turnaround has been the performances of a core of players, three of them listed below, but that also includes the previously misused Raul Meireles, the hitherto anonymous Maxi Rodriguez, the forever consistent Pepe Reina and a raft of academy graduates that have stepped up to fill in after a spate of injuries to established players.

Below are Goal.com‘s three nominees for Liverpool’s player of the season in alphabetical order. We then cast our vote at the bottom before leaving it up to you, the readers, to have your say.

Age: 30 Appearances: 38 Goals/Assists: 14/7 Cards: 3 0

The indefatigable Dutchman has been on a prolific run of late, netting 14 times in as many games for club and country, but throughout this season he has been consistently strong, putting in typically selfless and tireless performances from either his customary right-wing slot or when played through the middle. Flushed with newfound cash, it seems inevitable that there will be more competition for places in wide areas at Anfield next season, but it’s hard to see how anyone could oust the former Feyenoord man from the starting XI. He may not be the most technically proficient footballer at the club, but he has shown this season that he is perhaps the most committed and dependable of players, and he never disappears in the big games.

Age: 24 Appearances: 40 Goals/Assists 1/1 Cards: 10 1

Possibly the only outfield player who can claim to have played consistently well under both managers this season, the Brazilian has been a rock in the middle, with his new contract met with relief from fans who had previously been sceptical. Perhaps the 24-year-old has been unfairly judged since his signing from Gremio as he has had to fill in for, and inevitably was compared to, Steven Gerrard, Xabi Alonso and Javier Mascherano, but this season he has shown that he stands as his own man: a classy midfielder who knows how to tackle, when to drop into space to provide an out ball and when to release it to an attacking team-mate who can create something special – he’s become the lynchpin of a pass-and-move-based centre and has silenced his doubters.

Age: 24 Appearances: 11 Goals/Assists: 4/3 Cards: 1 0

Overlooked on transfer deadline day in January was the Uruguayan forward slipping into Liverpool’s Melwood training ground to finally put pen to paper on his protracted move to Merseyside. But if his transfer was overshadowed, the man himself has loomed large over the north west since making his goalscoring debut against Stoke. He has instantly added zest into an occasionally static and predictable front line and has already written his name into the club’s history with a virtuoso display against Manchester United, where he dribbled past four defenders in the box to tee up the first of Kuyt’s three goals. £35 million Andy Carroll may be the man who made the headlines in January and may be the literal successor to Fernando Torres as the club’s No.9, but it is the £23m purchase who has turned the Spaniard into a forgotten man.