Don't rule out RVP for the PFA

 

Robin Van Persie has got his scoring boots back on for Holland.  Ralph Ellis says it should remind us how valuable his goals have been for Manchester United and thinks the PFA could yet make him Player of the Year...

 

How many matches do you have to go through as a striker before you consider you are in a barren spell? Is it five? Ten? Andy Gray once told me he worried if he went two games without a goal.

 

Good strikers live and breathe on the exhilarating feeling from when the ball hits the back of the net, so nobody will have been more pleased than Robin Van Persie on Friday night when he got the second of Holland's three against Estonia.

 

There was nothing all that special about it - a left foot volley from about three yards to turn home Daryl Janmaat's centre. And RVP didn't mark it with any wild celebration, just jogging happily across to high-five Jeremain Lens who had been involved in the build-up before giving Janmaat a bit of a hug. But after seven games for Manchester United without hitting the target you can't tell me there wasn't a huge feeling of relief.

 

Holland, top of Group D with five wins out five games so far, next play Romania in Amsterdam tomorrow night giving Van Persie the chance to help himself to another goal or two - which should bring him back to England for Saturday's trip to relegation haunted Sunderland in the mood to keep his scoring boots on. Maybe then we'll remind ourselves just how crucial his contribution to United's season has been.

 

Maybe it was the chance he missed against Real Madrid in the Bernabeu; perhaps we just got bored with United dominating the Premier League. But one way or another it seems that Van Persie's few weeks off from the scoring charts has skewed the view of the difference the Dutchman's move to Old Trafford has made.

 

He was backed at 1.25 and below a couple of months ago to be the PFA's Player of the Year as his goals in the first half of the season made the difference for Sir Alex Ferguson's effort to regain the Premier League crown.

 

But the brilliance of Gareth Bale's one-man show for Tottenham and Wales during February has attracted all the attention and now it is the Spurs star who is odds-on favourite at 1.56, while RVP has drifted to 5.1. Liverpool's Luis Suarez - who also scored for Uruguay at the weekend, incidentally - is the only other genuine contender at 5.5.

 

Even if RVP's return to goalscoring form for his country makes a difference to him at home, it's too late now to affect the Player of the Year market. Voting closes next Tuesday, April 2, with the winner announced on April 28.

 

So before getting too convinced that Bale is now a certainty to be selected it's worth remembering a couple of things.

 

First of all there will be a proportion of players who will have looked at the significance of the individual's contribution and felt that Van Persie's goals decided the destination of the title. And secondly the early deadline means that a lot of votes had already been cast before the end of January. I know at least one Welsh international who wishes he had waited before filling out his form because he did it before his team mate suddenly started scoring spectacular goals for fun.

 

Two years ago Bale won the Players' vote on the basis of the first half of the season - he actually got injured early in January and sat out nearly two months, then never scored another goal when he returned. It didn't stop him being honoured, and at 5.1 it's worth a punt that a seven game "barren spell" won't keep RVP from winning the PFA award now.

 

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