Premier League 2022-23 review: players of the season

There aren’t many players ridiculous enough to mooch through their careers secure in the knowledge that any team in the world will take them any time they’re benevolent enough to deem them worthy. But Erling Haaland is one, a lab-created goalmonster sent from the future to destroy the present. Obviously there are the numbers – 36 goals, four hat-tricks – those alone tell us plenty. But football is about feelings not figures, and what’s special about Haaland is the fear he inspires in otherwise aggressive defenders and the joyful abandon that gives him, somehow apologetic and vicious at the same time – he knows it’s not fair but he’s glad it’s not fair, smile scrunching and expanding like a viking Les Dawson. Haaland isn’t the best at everything – there have been and still are defter and more imaginative centre-forwards. But the overall package of power and timing, of ravenousness and composure, are like nothing the game has ever seen – and he’s still getting better.

After a tricky introduction to “our league”, Martínez has made a mockery of it and the experts who thought they knew better than the bloke who’d managed him for three years. He hasn’t been perfect – who has? – but he has been consistently brilliant. Nemanja Vidic once said “I love defending,” and there was an element of wahey in how he hurled himself about. Martínez, on the other hand, hates not defending, attacking tackles, headers and blocks like they just called his mum a rude word, every aspect of his art is a confrontation. But there’s more to it than that – much more. Wondering why Manchester United faltered towards the end of the season? Why the goals dried up and Casemiro’s form evaporated? Martínez’s injury is why and we’re barely even talking about