The PFA Young Player of the Year award is broken; it doesn’t make sense. To be eligible, you must be aged 21 or under at the start of the season, which is why the heavily established names of Bukayo Saka, Phil Foden and Cole Palmer have walked away with it in recent years. Meanwhile, the Premier League’s Young Player of the Season version is even more generous and allows anyone up to the age of 23 to be in contention, which saw a then-22-year-old Erling Haaland take it home in 2022-23.
Admittedly we’ve made progress since 2010, when a 24-year-old James Milner was handed the PFA trophy off the back of his seventh full season in English football, but there’s still work to be done to accurately reflect the fact that footballers’ careers are starting earlier than ever.
By age 21 or 23, this generation of stars have often played hundreds of games and featured in major tournaments. The spirit of a Young Player of the Year award is to congratulate those just breaking through. So, in honour of that, we’re borrowing from the NBA and reworking it into Rookie of the Year.
To be eligible, players must have started this season as a teenager (aged 19 or under on Aug. 16, 2024) and be playing in their first full Premier League campaign. Some in this ranking are academy graduates who have broken into the first team, while others have arrived from different clubs and have clocked up some previous experience already.
First, a note on which players are not included despite being under the age limit. Kobbie Mainoo (Manchester United), Lewis Hall (Newcastle United), Rico Lewis (Manchester City), Jack Hinshelwood (Brighton & Hove Albion) and Facundo Buonanotte (Leicester City), are all into their second or third Premier League seasons, so are not eligible.
Meanwhile, Mateus Fernandes (Southampton) and Yankuba Minteh (Brighton) both turned 20 in July, which only just ruled them out of contention. Both have enjoyed strong individual campaigns at different ends of the table and would have been in the top 10 had they been born a few weeks later.
10. Oliver Scarles, LB, West Ham United
With 35-year-old Aaron Cresswell’s career winding down and Emerson struggling to maintain form, an opening appeared at left-back which Scarles dived headfirst into. He’s closing in 600 league minutes for the campaign and impressed sporadically, with his standout performance coming at the Emirates Stadium, where he totaled four tackles and seven interceptions in West Ham’s smash-and-grab 1-0 win over Arsenal.
9. Patrick Dorgu, LB, Manchester United
Dorgu stepped into a bad team and a bad situation when he signed from Lecce for £25 million in January. Given his inexperience, this could easily have swallowed him whole, but he has done well to stand out as a promising player for the future. The Denmark international has the kind of physical attributes that his Red Devils teammates have sorely lacked for most of this season, and he’s really taken flight in the club’s UEFA Europa League run.
8. Leny Yoro, CB, Manchester United
A €62m summer signing from Lille, Yoro would have featured higher on this list were it not for an injury-plagued first half of the campaign and the fact he has managed to clock up nearly 2,000 minutes, despite suffering a broken foot in preseason, is actually very impressive. His ability to win duels, pass out from the back and cover large spaces has already stood out, and United manager Ruben Amorim will be quietly confident that he has a centre-back for both the present and future.
7. Nico O’Reilly, CM/LB, Manchester City
Well off the title pace after a dismal run of form saw them win just two of their 10 league games (and lose six) in November and December, Manchester City looked to the January transfer window to save their season, splashing over £150m on four players — Omar Marmoush, Abdukodir Khusanov, Vitor Reis and Nico González — to improve the squad. But academy graduate O’Reilly made just as much of an impact as any of those big-money arrivals and has done so while playing out of position at left-back. The balance he has afforded the side, plus the speed, directness and natural width he offers in attack, helped carry the team into the FA Cup final and seemingly into the Premier League’s top five.
6. Archie Gray, CB/RB/CM, Tottenham Hotspur
Having played a full campaign with Leeds United, where he started the Championship playoff final loss to Southampton, Gray began the season as by far the most experienced young player on this list. We’ve taken that “headstart” into account when compiling the ranking, as experience counts for plenty, though not much could have prepared him for what he’s been through at 17th-placed Spurs.
In a constantly changing XI, the £40m teenager has had to flit between three different positions — right-back, centre-back, and central midfield — and spent the most time in his least familiar role in the middle of defence. The fact Gray has largely coped with everything thrown at him is hugely impressive, but clearly there were games in which he badly struggled, so he doesn’t quite make the top five.
5. Tyler Dibling, FW, Southampton
Dibling’s emergence was the talk of the Premier League by Christmas. And, while he’s tailed off in line with Southampton’s descent into inevitable relegation, the impression he left remains massive. When you see a young player fearlessly dribbling past hordes of attempted tackles, carrying his team up the pitch, you can’t help but sit up and take notice.
Among the eligible rookies, Dibling leads the league in average metres gained per carry (7.8) and is also second for carries of 10 metres or more (100). With only two goals to his name, perhaps he could have shown more end product, but when you factor in that he’s playing for one of the worst sides the Premier League has ever seen, it’s clear he’s gone above and beyond this term. And sources have told ESPN that Man United will move for him in the summer if they win the Europa League.
4. Ethan Nwaneri, CM/FW, Arsenal
Nwaneri has been tipped for the top since 2022, when he became the youngest-ever Premier League player aged 15 years and 181 days. Wisely, though, manager Mikel Arteta made us wait a few years to see more of the now 18-year-old, finally unleashing him to great effect this season, as he scored nine goals and laid on two assists.
While usually a central midfielder, Nwaneri was called into service on the right wing amid a long-term injury to Saka and that gave him plenty of chances to showcase his favorite type of strike: lashed, from distance, after cutting inside onto his left foot. His press resistance, strength and natural aggression may yet lead to a role in central midfield in the future and, while his impact diminished when Saka returned, he has turned in some really strong performances, most notably against Leicester and PSV Eindhoven.
3. Lucas Bergvall, CM, Tottenham Hotspur
Like his teammate Gray, Bergvall banked a fair amount of experience before moving to Spurs, playing 47 times for UEFA Conference League semifinalists Djurgården ahead of his £8.5m switch to London in the summer. Manager Ange Postecoglou took it slow with the Sweden international, waiting until January to truly trust him in the XI, but in the four months that followed, Bergvall made himself a huge part of the team. The 19-year-old’s blend of energy and composed passing has impressed many and, while it has been a tough one, he has had an excellent first campaign in England.
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Darke: Lewis-Skelly could be England’s left-back for a decade
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2. Myles Lewis-Skelly, LB, Arsenal
Had you asked Arsenal fans in August who their most likely Rookie of the Year candidate would be, the overwhelming reply would have been Nwaneri (and rightly so). That helps put into perspective just how incredible Lewis-Skelly’s leap has been, moving from the fringes of the squad to become a regular starter at the age 18.
Originally a central midfielder in the Gunners’ academy, Lewis-Skelly has fought his way past a host of established names — including Oleksandr Zinchenko, Kieran Tierney, and £37m signing Riccardo Calafiori — to play over 2,000 minutes at left-back this season. He started vs. Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League quarterfinals and semifinals, made his senior debut and scored for England in the same game, all while playing a complex role that involves him inverting into midfield. There aren’t very many players who could take on so much, so soon, on these sorts of stages and thrive.
1. Dean Huijsen, CB, Bournemouth
Bournemouth have quietly become one of the Premier League’s smartest operators in the transfer market and Huijsen is the ultimate proof of that. The teenager flashed immense potential in a short loan spell at Roma in the second half of last season, and once the opportunity to whisk him away from parent club Juventus cropped up, the Cherries acted quickly and snapped him up for just £15m.
Bournemouth coach Andoni Iraola allowed him time to adapt to life in England, calling on him sparingly until December, but when an injury to Marcos Senesi thrust Huijsen into the starting XI alongside Illia Zabarnyi, he showed why he’s so highly rated. Lean, tall, mobile, and strong in ground duels, he is already one of the finest in his position at advancing the ball from the back, ranking in the 93rd percentile across Europe’s top five leagues for progressive carries and the 87th percentile for progressive passes. He could improve aerially over the next few years, but his two-footedness also gives him angles to play which others can only dream of.
Born in the Netherlands, Huijsen made the international switch to Spain and was handed his senior debut in March 2025 against the country of his birth. Over the course of this season, he has grown from an intriguing prospect to £50m target for many top clubs (with sources telling ESPN that Real Madrid are among those keen). This feels like the very definition of a Rookie of the Year.
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