Pat Nevin has claimed that Nathan Ake has had a better Premier League campaign than Luke Shaw.
The Dutchman made his final league appearance of the season in City’s recent 1-0 defeat against Brentford having already won his third Premier League title with the Manchester club.
Despite this defeat, the defender has found himself on the end of some heavy praise from one pundit, in particular.
Nevin praises Ake
Speaking on a recent video on the Off The Ball YouTube channel, Nevin had this to say about who his pick was for the left full-back position in his team of the season.
He said: “The left-wing-back is really tough.
“I think Shaw for a long period of time deserved it, but there’s something about Ake, if you’re playing a back three, you’ve got a guy who can do them all, and you can almost put [John] Stones there instead, they’re almost interchangeable, but he’d be the other side so.
“I’ll say Ake, I think Ake has had a brilliant season.”
This season has seen the 28-year-old, who City paid Bournemouth £41m for back in 2020, feature in 26 of the club’s 38 league games, being deployed as a centre-back and left-back on occasion.
Despite making five fewer league appearances than the United full-back this season, Ake still managed to end the season with a higher passing accuracy percentage (90.4% vs 83.7%) and percentage of aerial duels won (62.1% vs (61.3%) than Shaw.
The two defenders also ended the campaign with the same number of progressive passes made (140).
Looking back at Sunday’s defeat against Brentford, the Netherlands international only played 63 minutes of the game but still managed to end the match with the joint-highest match rating in the City side according to SofaScore (7.2/10)
With all of that in mind, it’s easy to see why Nevin has picked the City star for his team of the season over the Englishman.
