PFA Player of the Year Betting: Rooney's hot form heaps extra value on the other runners in season long race

Premier League / Ralph Ellis / 30 September 2009 / Leave a Comment

Is Wayne Rooney value at 3.75 to win the PFA Player of the Year award?

"It's a wide open race again, especially as it's still early season and the market hasn't settled. If you've never tried putting up prices to see if a bet can be matched before, this is a good place to experiment."

Plenty of attention has been paid to United's main man this season and that is opening up the market to other big names in the Player of the Year market

At the very top of the game, Wayne Rooneyas always been a bit of a nearly player. Now, I know that might sound harsh judgement on somebody who has 25 goals from 55 England caps, and has won three Premier League medals plus a European Cup. But we're talking very top here - World Cups and European Championships.

Rooney exploded onto the scene at his first major tournament in Portugal in 2004, only to limp out in the quarter-final with a broken foot. By the end of the game England had limped out with him. He was unfit at the World Cup two years later, then of course never went at all, along with the rest of Steve McLaren's miserable under achievers, to Euro 2008.

Meanwhile at club level, if we're talking world superstars, he's lived until now in the shadow of Cristiano Ronaldo. The Portuguese winger hugged so much limelight on the pitch that Rooney's deeds were often overshadowed. What's more they forced him regularly to play out of position in wide areas, and do twice as much work for the team to accommodate Ronaldo's defensive frailties.

Now, of course, Ronaldo has gone to Real Madrid and Rooney can be the main man. And the signs are that he's blossoming with the responsibility. Certainly Sir Alex Ferguson thinks so, and on the eve of tonight's Champions League match with Wolfsburg, Fergie has been talking up his striker's prospects of following Ronaldo as a World Player of the Year.

"There are some great players out there. Kaka, Ronaldo and Lionel Messi are the best three at the moment, and I think Wayne can get to that level if he keeps making progress," he said yesterday.

Six Premier League goals already this season, plus one in the Community Shield, emphasize just how much Rooney has benefited from having his role in the team simplified.

And it set me thinking that if Fergie reckons his boy can be best in the world, it follows he should comfortably be voted the best in England. I soon discovered that a few others have had that idea first, as Rooney's price to be PFA Player of the Year has dropped to just [3.7].

And there's where some value has been created in the market. Rooney's shorter price means Fernando Torres, fresh from a weekend hat-trick over Hull, is as long as [7.0] to be honoured by his peers when the PFA dinner comes round next spring. Yet he's as short as [2.88] to be the Premier League's top scorer.

Think about that. If Torres goes on banging goals in, and stays clear at the top of the scoring charts, he'll win a huge vote from the other players whatever Rooney does. So you are effectively getting odds three times better for Liverpool's Spanish sensation to be top scorer. Having picked out Ryan Giggs at long odds at about this time last year, there's money to be made.

It's a wide open race again, especially as it's still early season and the market hasn't settled. If you've never tried putting up prices to see if a bet can be matched before, this is a good place to experiment.

Gareth Barry, for instance, is currently [18.0] to back and [190.0] to lay. A couple of pounds half way between that, if somebody matches it, could be a great punt as the England midfielder seems to be the key force in Manchester City's efforts to break the big four monopoly.

And what about Michael Essien, at somewhere between [4.1] and [48.0]? He's been Chelsea's midfield driving force in their early season successes.

Five things you might not know about Gareth Barry...

1. Born in Hastings, he played for the same school cricket team as Sussex captain Michael Yardy.

2. His first club was Brighton, but he never made more than one appearance as a youth team substitute for them and wasn't offered a YTS contract. Villa still had to fork out a £2.5million compensation package for signing Barry and Michael Standing.

3. He took Frank Lampard's record as the youngest player to appear in 300 Premier League games, aged 26 years 247 days.

4. He turned down magazine deals for his wedding to childhood sweetheart Louise in the summer of 2007 and kept it a private family ceremony. They have two children, son Oscar and daughter Freya.

5. His goal in the World Cup qualifier against Kazakhstan in June is his only competitive goal for England in 31 caps dating back to 2000. He scored one other in a friendly away to Trinidad and Tobago.