The Professional Footballers' Association just dropped its six-woman shortlist for the PFA Women’s Player of the Year award, and honestly, the rest of the league is just playing for third place.
Manchester City completely tore up the standard narrative this season. They snatched the Women’s Super League crown and added the FA Cup trophy to their cabinet. It makes total sense that their two most influential figures, Khadija "Bunny" Shaw and Yui Hasegawa, are anchoring this list. The real debate isn't whether a City player deserves the trophy on August 25 at the Manchester Opera House. The debate is which of these two completely different geniuses actually drove that double-winning engine room.
The PFA award hits differently because it's voted on by the players themselves. Peers know who makes life miserable on a Sunday afternoon. While standard mainstream media coverage tends to obsess over individual highlights, looking closely at how City structured their campaign shows why these two are the clear frontrunners over a highly competitive field.
The Case for Bunny Shaw’s Absolute Dominance
Let's look at the raw numbers because they're ridiculous. Shaw ended her league campaign with 21 goals in 22 matches. She basically started every single game with a 1-0 advantage already written into the script.
Winning the Football Writers’ Association award in May was just the warm-up act. What makes Shaw completely unplayable isn't just the sheer volume of goals, but how she scores them. Opposing center-backs spent the entire year getting physically bullied in the box or caught flat-footed by her movement.
Many critics tried to argue early in the year that Shaw relies too heavily on the service around her. That's a massive misunderstanding of how Gareth Taylor’s side operates. Shaw creates her own gravity. Her hold-up play opens up oceans of space for the wingers, forcing opposing defensive lines to drop deep just to avoid getting embarrassed by her pace. When a striker forces an entire back four to alter their tactical alignment before kickoff, that's real influence.
Yui Hasegawa is the League's Real Mastermind
If Shaw is the hammer, Hasegawa is the architect drawing up the blueprints. The Japan international doesn't put up eye-popping numbers in the standard box scores, but ask any midfielder who faced her this year about trying to get the ball off her. It's almost impossible.
Playing as the deep-lying anchor, Hasegawa controls the tempo of every single game she touches. Her press resistance is elite. She regularly picks up the ball directly in front of her own center-backs, wriggles away from two oncoming attackers, and slips a perfectly weighted transition pass into the final third.
You can't measure her impact through goals or traditional assists. You measure it by how quiet the opposition’s attacking midfielders look when they play City. She snuffs out danger before it even turns into a counter-attack. Without Hasegawa stabilizing the base of that midfield, City's full-backs wouldn't have the freedom to push high, and Shaw wouldn't get nearly as many clean looks at goal. She's the classic player's player.
The Rest of the Shortlist Pack
The other four nominees had stellar seasons, but they're realistically fighting uphill battles against the sky-blue momentum.
Arsenal's Alessia Russo led the chasing pack, finishing second behind Shaw in the Golden Boot race with 13 goals. Russo completely changed how Arsenal played after adjusting to her role, proving she’s much more than a standard target woman. She fought through spells of inconsistent service to keep Arsenal in the conversation, but trailing Shaw by eight goals in the scoring charts makes it hard to argue she had a superior individual year.
Lauren James remains the most naturally gifted entertainer in English football. When Chelsea needed a spark, James delivered moments of pure individual brilliance that flooded social media feeds. Yet, consistency issues and Chelsea's failure to secure the big domestic trophies this year will likely hurt her voting numbers among her peers.
Then you have the standout performers from the traditional underdogs. Jess Park enjoyed a breakout campaign for Manchester United, stepping up as a primary creative outlet when others faltered. Down at Aston Villa, Kirsty Hanson put together a brilliant individual campaign, racking up 12 goals in 22 appearances. For a winger playing outside the traditional top-three clubs, those numbers are phenomenal. Hanson deserves massive credit for forcing her way into this conversation alongside the elite squads, even if a trophy bias will likely keep her off the podium.
The Next Generation in Blue
City's dominance isn't just a short-term trend either. Look over at the PFA Young Player of the Year shortlist, and you'll find Laura Blindkilde Brown right there.
Blindkilde Brown stepped directly into the midfield alongside Hasegawa, playing in all but two of City's WSL matches during their title run. Learning from Hasegawa has clearly accelerated her development. She's competing against major young talent like Chelsea's duo of Alyssa Thompson and Veerle Buurman, Tottenham's Toko Koga, Arsenal's Olivia Smith, and London City Lionesses' Freya Godfrey.
But Blindkilde Brown has something none of those players have. She has a league winner's medal around her neck and a season's worth of masterclasses playing next to the best deep midfielder in the country.
How to Assess the Final Vote
If you're trying to figure out who actually takes the big trophy home on August 25, you have to look at voting psychology. Forward players usually hold the advantage because goals are memorable. Shaw’s 21-goal haul is a massive, undeniable statement that slaps voters in the face.
However, don't rule out Hasegawa. Players respect the dirty work and the tactical intelligence required to dominate a midfield for nine straight months.
If you want to understand where the modern women’s game is headed, stop watching just the highlight reels. Watch how Manchester City builds from the back through Hasegawa, and watch how ruthlessly Shaw finishes those sequences. The PFA shortlist got it completely right this year. The rest of the league has a massive gap to plug before next season kicks off.
