The nominees for the 2025-26 Premier League Player of the Season have been announced, and Arsenal have plenty of representation.

On 23 May, the prize will be awarded to the most outstanding player in the competition this season.

The last five winners of the award have played for the eventual Premier League champions that season, with Mohamed Salah winning the POTS last campaign after helping Liverpool to the 2024-25 title.

Salah, however, has not made the list this time around.

Erling Haaland is the only previous winner named among the 2025-26 nominees.

The list includes three Arsenal players, while Manchester United's Bruno Fernandes is a big favourite. Antoine Semenyo, Igor Thiago and Morgan Gibbs-White have also made the cut.

Here, we assess the stats behind the nominees' respective seasons, outlining why they deserve to be in the running for the 2025-26 Premier League Player of the Season award.

Bruno Fernandes

Fernandes has made the eight-man nominee list for the Premier League Player of the Season for the first time since 2020-21 after one of his best seasons at United.

The playmaker will surely end the season as the player with the most assists in the competition. At the time of writing, Fernandes has created 19 goals for United in the Premier League in 2025-26, one off the all-time Premier League seasonal assist record of 20 set by both Thierry Henry in 2002-03 and Kevin De Bruyne in 2019-20.

Ten of his 11 assists have come from set-piece situations, with that just one away from the Premier League seasonal record set by Steven Gerrard in 2013-14.

Fernandes' tally of 124 chances created is the best by any player in the Premier League since De Bruyne created 136 in 2019-20.

No United player has collected the Premier League Player of the Season award since Nemanja Vidic in 2010-11, but the Red Devils have provided winners in a record eight different seasons across six different players.

Morgan Gibbs-White

Gibbs-White has enjoyed his best season in front of goal in the Premier League, netting 13 goals in 35 appearances for Nottingham Forest.

His previous highest tally came last season, when he scored seven times on the way to helping Forest secure a top-seven finish. This time around, he has been integral to them staying up.

Only five players have accumulated more non-penalty goal involvements than Gibbs-White (16) across the 2025-26 Premier League campaign, while just eight players have created more chances in open play than the Englishman (43).

Erling Haaland

Haaland has now made the shortlist for the Player of the Season in three of his four campaigns at Man City since joining the club in the summer of 2022, only missing out on being nominated for the award last season.

He looks set to finish as the Premier League's Golden Boot winner for the third time, with the Norwegian scoring 26 goals so far in 2025-26 – four ahead of nearest rival Igor Thiago.

The only players to have won the Premier League Golden Boot at least three times so far are Thierry Henry (four), Salah (four), Alan Shearer (three) and Harry Kane (three).

With eight assists in 2025-26, Haaland has equalled his best-ever tally in a Premier League campaign (also eight in 2022-23) and created as many goals as he did in the previous two seasons combined (five in 2023-24 and 3 in 2024-25).

Gabriel Magalhaes 

Gabriel has played a big role in making Arsenal one of the most defensively resolute Premier League sides we've seen in recent seasons.

Conceding just 26 goals in 36 games so far in 2025-26, Arsenal could become one of just 31 sides (out of 686 in Premier League history) to concede fewer than 30 goals in a Premier League season. Just 19 of those goals have come when Gabriel has been on the pitch.

Of the 57 defenders to have been involved in 200+ duels this season, only four have a superior duel success rate to Gabriel's 65.9%.

Only one Brazilian has previously won the Premier League Player of the Season award across 30 previous seasons of the accolade, which began in 1994-95: Juninho in 1996-97.

David Raya

Raya has already secured the Premier League Golden Glove award for the third successive season (he shared it with Matz Sels in 2024-25), with 18 clean sheets kept and two matchdays left to play.

Should he keep a clean sheet in both of Arsenal's final two games, against Burnley and Crystal Palace, then he will be the first goalkeeper to keep 20 clean sheets in a season since Alisson and Ederson both did it in 2021-22.

The Gunners' goalkeeper is the only player to have started every single Premier League game for Arsenal in 2025-26, not missing a single minute of their season.

Raya will hope to become just the second goalkeeper to win the Premier League Player of the Season award, and the first in 30 years, after Peter Schmeichel collected the accolade in 1995-96.

Declan Rice

Rice is set to end his third campaign as an Arsenal player, and he has now earned a spot on the shortlist for this award in all three of them.

No outfielder has played more league minutes for Arsenal this season than Rice (3,009), with the England international missing just one of their 36 league matches in 2025-26 so far.

Arsenal's most creative player in 2025-26, Rice has set up 63 chances for his team-mates and has accumulated a team-high 6.9 expected assists (xA).

Much of his creative threat comes from his set-piece delivery – no player has a higher xA total from corners and indirect free-kicks than Rice in the Premier League this season (3.2).

He leads all Arsenal players for possession regains per 90 minutes (5.2) and has averaged 80 touches per 90 in the Premier League this season, the most involved that Rice has ever been in a single top-flight league campaign.

Antoine Semenyo

Semenyo began the season at Bournemouth, where he was involved in 13 goals in 20 appearances (10 goals, three assists) before making a transfer to Man City.

The forward enjoyed a fantastic start to life as a City player, scoring in five of his first eight Premier League appearances for Pep Guardiola's side.

Only one previous winner of this award has represented two different clubs in their award-winning season. Dwight Yorke played once for Aston Villa in 1998-99 before moving to Manchester United and winning a famous treble in his first campaign at the Red Devils.

Igor Thiago

After a hugely frustrating, injury-hit debut campaign last term, Thiago has been one of the stories of the season with his goalscoring feats at Brentford in 2025-26.

With 22 goals so far, he has broken the records for both the highest scoring Brentford player in a Premier League season and the highest scoring Brazilian player in a single Premier League campaign. Those goals helped him earn his international debut with Brazil in March.

He has scored 42.3% of Brentford's Premier League goals this season, while his tally of 25 goals in all competitions contributes over a third of his team's total (38.5%). 

Eight of his league goals have come from penalties (36.4%), missing just one of his nine attempts – only eight players in Premier League history have taken more penalties in a single season than the Brentford forward in 2025-26.