With the Premier League back in action after the Christmas break and 2025 right around the corner, every team in the English top flight has played at least 17 matches and the true first half of the season (19 games played) is almost complete. So now is as good of a time as any to take stock of the 2024/25 season thus far and hand out some Premier League midseason awards to individuals around the league. No surprise to see that Liverpool dominate the pack!
Best Manager
There is no question that Arne Slot deserves the honor as the best manager of the Premier League so far this season. He stepped into a difficult situation as the new man in charge of the club after Jurgen Klopp resigned, as Klopp is a club legend who rebuilt the Reds from perennial underperformance back into a European giant.
Well right now, there is no better team in Europe than Liverpool, who decimated defending champions Real Madrid and are currently up six points on Arsenal domestically with an additional game in hand.
Slot has gotten the most out of his players, coaxing world-class midfield breakout performances from Ryan Gravenberch and Curtis Jones, and he’s doing more with Luis Diaz and Cody Gakpo than Klopp did last season.
Best Goalkeeper
Almost by default Alisson Becker is the best goalkeeper in the Premier League, but the lane was open for another top keeper to take his spot as the league’s best this season after his injury.
Liverpool didn’t miss a beat with how well Caoimhin Kelleher played between the sticks in his stead, but the best goalkeeper of the 2024/25 season thus far doesn’t belong to the Reds.
David Raya has made so many stunning saves this season and ranks third in the league in save percentage, second in goals allowed per 90, and fourth in clean sheet percentage. He has the best all-around stat ledger in English football.
Best Defender
The argument begins and ends with Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk. Back to his best, the man has been beyond shutdown this season as Liverpool have gone from returning to title contention last season to pretty much running away with the crown this season.
Van Dijk has been central to those efforts, and there’s really no question that, at this point, Liverpool’s leader at the back is the absolute best center back in the world today.
Best Midfielder
I could give this to an attacking midfielder like Cole Palmer or even Wolves’ Matheus Cunha, but it would feel cheap to say that the best midfielder is an attacking midfielder.
So when it comes to the 6’s and 8’s, it all comes down to either Chelsea’s Moises Caicedo, who has rebounded excellently this season, or Liverpool’s breakout star Ryan Gravenbech.
Jones could also give Gravenberch a run for his money in the Premier League midseason awards, but I think the way the Dutchman has broken out as a shielding defensive midfielder and really anchored this entire Liverpool team has to be the clincher.
No midfielder is as tactically important to his side as Gravenberch, who is a major reason for the Reds’ dominance in both the Premier League and the Champions League this season.
Best Forward
It’s Mohamed Salah. His 16 goals and 11 assists lead the league in both categories, and, at this point, Salah has to be running away with the Ballon d’Or in just as emphatic fashion as Liverpool are seen as the odds-on favorites to capture the Champions League once more this season.
The Egyptian icon is literally playing the best football of his life, which made the plodding nature of his contract negotiations all the more absurd. This man is far too good to be headed to Saudi Arabia.
Best Young Player
I always define the best young player as anyone under the age of 23, and since Saka is now literally 23 and Palmer 22, the nod ends up going to the Chelsea superstar.
Palmer is quietly having an excellent encore season to his 2023/24 campaign, currently sitting on 12 goals and 6 assists in 18 matches for an average of exactly one goal contribution per game.
The ace Chelsea playmaker is also averaging a league-high 2.7 key passes and 2.3 fouls drawn per game, proving to be untouchable in all phases of attacking play.
Biggest Surprise
Initially, I intended to go with only individual players on this Premier League midseason awards list, but I don’t think anyone better encapsulates a true surprise than Nottingham Forest, who are fourth in the league by some distance over the competition.
Forest are shockingly six points ahead of reigning champions Manchester City after Christmas, as well as five points ahead of Newcastle in fifth and fellow surprise side Bournemouth in sixth.
They are just one point behind Chelsea and two behind Arsenal, placing Forest in elite competition behind a legitimately top-class defense. And oh by the way, they are the only team to have handed league leaders Liverpool a loss.
Biggest Disappointment
Likewise, the biggest disappointment has to be Manchester City, because they have a handful of big names who could qualify individually as finalists for the most disappointing singular player in the Premier League.
Man City can’t buy a win at this stage, even against some of the league’s most underachieving clubs like Everton and Manchester United. The losing is now chronic, and there is real rot in the fabric of a club under investigation.
Best Overall Player
It’s Mo Salah for the reasons above. I think more people should seriously entertain Saka as a Premier League Player of the Season challenger to Salah, especially when you talk about Saka’s sheer importance to an Arsenal team that doesn’t have any other great forwards besides him, but the dominance of Salah’s production and the way he shows up late in games pretty much seal this race already.
But if anyone can actually challenge Salah, then it would be Saka, another one of the two best right wingers on this planet. Otherwise, what Salah is doing as a scorer and creator is beyond remarkable, and he is, by far, the most efficient attacking player in world football.
The managing editor of The Trivela Effect, Kevin has 15 years of experience in digital media. He covered Real Madrid from 2019-2022 for The Real Champs as a site manager. You can contact him at the site’s official Twitter handle @TrivelaEffect or via the site’s official email thetrivelaeffect@gmail.com.