There are two basic flaws with the PFA young player of the year award.

The first is that players can be nominated for both the Young Player of the Year and the Player of the Year award. And the second is the age limit of the nominees.

The idea that a player can be nominated for both awards seems perfectly rational. After all if a youngster is amongst the overall outstanding performers in the Premier League during a particular season, then why wouldn’t nominations for both awards seem the logical thing? However, we soon discover a problem. When two out of the six nominees up for the Young Player of the Year award are also nominated for the Player of the Year award, as is the case this year, it seems ridiculous that anyone but one of those two players could win the young award.

After all, isn’t the fact that Eden Hazard and Daniel Sturridge are up for both awards a clear indication of who the best young player is? Surely if Raheem Sterling, Ross Barkley, Luke Shaw or Aaron Ramsey deserved the young award more than Hazard or Sturridge, they would have received Player of the Year nominations too.

It seems crazy to think that potentially Hazard or Sturridge could be awarded the Player of the Year prize, but not the Young Player of the Year award. And given that the winners are voted for by their fellow professionals, it certainly isn’t out of the question.

If anyone besides Hazard or Sturridge wins the Young Player of the Year award it would make something of a mockery of the entire system. But there are ways to reform it in order to try to combat these problems.

Firstly, a reduction in the maximum age applicable to nominees. It currently stands at 24 (Editor: 23 or under at the start of the season technically), and as we’ve seen, the most talented players do tend to be at the top of their game by the age of 22 or 23. So players being nominated for both awards is far from a rare occurrence. Gareth Bale took both awards last season and recently, Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney have both done the same.

24 is far too old an age to still be considered a ‘young player’, as most players begin to reach the peak of their careers in their mid-twenties, and it just means that we’re more likely to have this problem in the future, where players are nominated for both awards.

The second way to combat the problem would be to prevent players from being nominated for both awards (i.e. Hazard and Sturridge would be removed from nomination for the Young Player of the Year award). It seems harsh, but this way it would give a chance for the ‘proper’ young players who are perhaps in their breakthrough season to reap the rewards.

Gareth Bale winning the Young Player of the Year award last year may have been absolutely fair according the rule book, but it was utterly pointless. If he had a been 19 or 20, it would have been a different story, but he was an established Premier League player who was clearly in a class above the rest of the young nominees. His victory was fair and square according to the rules but are we as fans left with the true indication of who the best young talent was last season? Of course we’re not. And there’s the problem. It’s all well and good playing by the rules, but they don’t leave us with anything useful.

Either the age limit must be lowered (to at least 22 or even 21, as we have plenty of outstanding teenagers in the Premier League every season) or players should be unable to be nominated for both awards. Otherwise the Young Player of Year award will remain seriously flawed. If the young award goes to anyone other than Hazard or Sturridge then something is seriously wrong with our voting system. Either that or the voters are all morons. It would be like Cristiano Ronaldo being left out of the World XI moments after receiving the Ballon D’or. It’s simply illogical.