Meet the All-Disappointing Team

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If the Professional Footballers' Association can announce its Premier League Team of the Season with roughly 80 percent of the games played, I have no problem blowing the whistle early to present my All-Disappointing Team. (And no, it doesn't just go to Arsenal.)

But first, a word about my highly scientific methodology, which combines a complex array of algorithms, SOCRmetrics and beer.

This list is not to be confused with the All-Crap EPL Team, although some of its honorees could easily claim places on both. Rather, my XI is made up of the players from whom so much was expected and so little was actually delivered -- kind of like every Nicolas Cage movie since 1995.

So give it up for your 2011 ADT …

DF -- Jose Bosingwa, Chelsea

Expectations: To finally show just why Roman Abramovich spent $28 million to lure him from FC Porto in 2008, presumably thinking that since the Russian had found Jose Mourinho there that this quick, unibrowed right back would display similar levels of Special One-ness.

The Reality: After impressing in 2008 and being injured for most of 2009, Bosingwa has reached an equilibrium whereby his mediocrity is so metronomically consistent that it has to be admired. Locked in a turgid battle for sole possession of the right back spot with Serbian defensive do-it-all Branislav Ivanovic, Bosingwa's 20 EPL appearances this season have passed with as much acclaim as Paul Reiser's return to prime-time television. It truly boggles the mind that at one point last year, Bayern Munich were interested in Bosingwa's services; I bet Roman's still kicking himself that he let that offer go.

Scott Heavey/Getty ImagesRyan Shawcross has made a bad habit of picking up cards this season.

DF -- Ryan Shawcross, Stoke City

Expectations: To prove "he's not that kind of player" after snapping Aaron Ramsey's leg like a dry branch last season, and to rediscover the bruising, uncompromising form that had him flirting with a spot on the English national team -- and made Stoke City the bully boys of the Prem.

The Reality: He is totally that kind of player. Shawcross embodies Stoke's brutal style of play so mercilessly that it occasionally borders on criminal assault. Though he hasn't dismembered any more opponents this season, the newly crowned club captain has left his cleats in on enough reckless challenges to earn six yellows and two reds, making him one of only four players in the league to double up on ejections.

DF -- Joleon Lescott, Manchester City

Expectations: To live up to the commanding form that saw him named Everton's Player of the Year two years running and to somehow justify his price tag as the third-most expensive defender in the world. At Goodison, Lescott was revered for his aerial power and uncanny goal scoring (10 goals in all competitions in 2008), and the EPL's highest shot-to-goal ratio (nearly 43 percent).

The Reality: Injuries and poor form frequently made Lescott look as though he were playing with $40 million worth of gold bricks on his back this season. Roberto Mancini swiftly dumped him in favor of Kolo Toure and Vincent Kompany, who formed an imperious, reliable center back pairing, and Lescott was used largely in the Europa League and FA Cup campaigns simply to give him some exercise. But Mancini was forced to reinstate the 29-year-old to the starting lineup when Toure tested positive for banned substances. So Lescott now has a chance to show his worth. So far, all he's proved is that he's the slowest man in Manchester -- and that includes 69-year-old Sir Alex.

MF -- James Milner, Manchester City

Expectations: Having excelled in the small pond of Aston Villa, Milner couldn't possibly resist the sheikh's siren song and raced up the highway this past August in a $43 million transfer a lot faster than he ever moved on the field. He had the world at his versatile feet: a partnership with England teammate Gareth Barry, creativity on the flank in David Silva and a solid back line that would leave him free to create chances for Carlos Tevez and help lead the light Blues to the promised land of the Champions League.

The Reality: Milner made 28 EPL appearances for City this season, but can you recall a single one of note? More alarming for Mancini is Milner's bad karma; he's started in seven of City's eight league defeats this season and frequently cedes his place to extra strikers or Adam Johnson, the much cheaper and much more dynamic option on the flank. Milner completed his professional devolution during City's spanking at the hands of Liverpool. Mancini subbed him off in the second half and Milner petulantly stomped, shrugged and sulked his way to the sidelines, proving once again that -- as for Emmanuel Adebayor, Craig Bellamy and Stephen Ireland before him -- the pale blue grass isn't always greener.

MF -- Steven Gerrard, Liverpool

Expectations: England's 2010 World Cup captain would be the powerful and skillful hub of the new Liverpool, using his telepathic connection with Fernando Torres to drive Roy Hodgson's Reds back to their rightful place among Europe's elite.

The Reality: The only thing Stevie G's telepathy drove was Hodgson -- and then Torres -- out of town. Not that it was all his fault, but he did captain a Titanic-like disaster for much of the season. His oft-injured groin was really to blame, and with Uncle Roy and El Nino both out the Anfield door, he manfully kept Liverpool from spiraling down the relegation drain by spearheading the double over Chelsea and the 3-1 win over United. But this was not the commanding Gerrard of Istanbul and Cardiff legend. Given his Champions League and FA Cup miracles, Gerrard may be judged more harshly than most, yet at 30 years old he's experiencing the dip that most great players face heading into their soccer dotage -- see his traffic cone-esque performance in a 3-1 embarrassment at Upton Park -- and when he hurt himself midway through King Kenny's latest reign, Liverpool continued to surge up the table in his absence, thanks to Dalglish's deft work in piecing together a vibrant midfield led by Lucas Leiva and Raul Meireles. Though most teams would kill for Gerrard's DJ-pummeling passion, his 2010-11 EPL output (four goals, five assists) has been a far cry from only two seasons ago when Gerrard was the Football Writers Player of the Year (scoring 16 EPL goals) and was being hailed as the finest attacking midfielder England has produced since Bobby Charlton.

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ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty ImagesIt's time for Arsene Wenger to send Cesc Fabregas back to Barcelona -- to warm the bench.

MF -- Cesc Fabregas, Arsenal

Expectations: After last summer's teenage-girl romance with his childhood club, Barcelona, Fabregas chose to return to Papa Arsene to personally lead the charge to end the Gunners' six-year trophy drought. With Fabregas as Arsenal's leading goal scorer from last season, and its youngest captain of the modern era, this was finally the year in which the 23-year-old would morph from adolescent pizza-flinging promise to the Gunners' mature field general.

The Reality: Making Fabregas captain may have been Wenger's biggest mistake, and that's saying something. As skillful and creative as he is as a player, as a captain Fabregas ranks somewhere between Morgan and Crunch. His leadership this season has consisted of waving imaginary yellow cards in referees' faces and questioning their integrity on Twitter and in the tunnel. Even one of his teammates, Denilson, felt compelled to tell the British press "Cesc is a captain but not a leader."

Meanwhile, Fabregas' goal production has gone the way of Wenger's sangfroid. It hasn't helped that Wenger has gambled by playing him in games when he wasn't totally fit -- he's been dogged by a recurring hamstring problem -- but there is no excuse for the mental lapses that have caused Arsenal fans such bloodcurdling pain this season. Raising his arm to defend a free kick against Spurs, attempting a blind back-heel at the edge of the Gunners' box against Barca, needlessly assisting Tom Huddlestone on his wonder goal in the North London Derby, and always insisting on making the killer pass in the opponent's penalty area rather than trying something as crass as shooting. Note to Wenger: Take the $35-plus million and let Cesc go to Barca and look pretty. On their bench.

MF -- Joe Cole, Liverpool

Expectations: The conventional wisdom was that the only English midfielder of his generation who could actually create off the dribble was simply underappreciated at Chelsea. His career resurrection at Liverpool, though, would provide his new club with the missing wide threat the Reds had lacked for years. Even Captain Stevie G was all doe-eyed as he rhapsodized that Cole was "better than Messi."

The Reality: Not only could Messi sue for slander, but that statement may be grounds to have Gerrard committed to a mental institution. Hodgson used his new winger sparingly after Cole's disastrous red card in the season's opening fixture followed by the usual litany of injuries. Not-so-joltin' Joe was so bad that he couldn't break onto a Liverpool team that struggled desperately under Hodgson. World-class luminaries like Jonjo Shelvey and Jay Spearing have seen more time on the field than The Cole-inator, who was quickly reduced to cameos against the Ukrainian and Polish juggernauts Liverpool faced in the Europa League. He wasn't good in those matches, either.

When Hodgson finally exited the Kop, Dalglish went one step further and hardly let Cole near the field, starting him in a paltry three games. Sure, Liverpool got Cole on a free transfer ("best buy of the year" trumpeted the normally insightful site That's On Point), but then it went ahead and paid him $21 million. For that kind of money, Liverpool could have bought back one-quarter of Fernando Torres from Chelsea -- or whatever's left of him.

Expectations: First, he was supposed to return from his subpar World Cup to help lead Liverpool back toward the top of the table. Then he became the most expensive January transfer in soccer history, as Abramovich engaged in an orgy of spending to bring the Spaniard to Stamford Bridge. Who better than El Nino, the player who scored the fastest ever 50 goals for Liverpool, to re-ignite Chelsea's obsessive quest for the elusive Champions League prize?

The Reality: It's the greatest waste of money since Paul McCartney divorced Heather Mills. Torres has yet to sully his Chelsea account with a goal in more than 700 minutes of playing time. Never mind that Chelsea didn't need Torres to begin with; just look at his inability to click with Nicolas Anelka or Didier Drogba, a tandem much more suited to the Blues' counter-attacking style. Yet to justify the $80 million that Abramovich spent on the striker, Carlo Ancelotti keeps trying to squeeze the Spanish round peg into the Chelsea square hole. Perhaps the most damning indictment of this Frankenstein experiment is that in their entire time playing together, Drogba and Torres have connected on a total of five passes. Ironically, Torres' inclusion, at Drogba's expense, in the quarterfinal against Manchester United helped doom Roman's latest Champions League fantasy. If Torres continues at this breakneck pace, he soon may well overtake Andriy Shevchenko and Adrian Mutu as lead mutt in Abramovich's overpriced kennel.

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Mike Hewitt/Getty ImagesMario Balotelli's football has been overshadowed by his immature antics.

FW -- Mario Balotelli, Manchester City

Expectations: Italy's bad-boy striker was parachuted into Eastlands for a staggering $40 million to finally give Carlos Tevez a partner worthy of his attacking genius. With speed, strength and skill, Super Mario was destined to be one of the shiny new studs that brought league and even European dominance to the other side of Manchester. Reunited with his old Inter boss, Roberto Mancini, Balotelli's switch would be the move that finally set him free, as he darted past the turmoil of his Serie A career.

The Reality: He got the darts part right, chucking them out of his first-floor window at City's youth players simply because he was "bored." While the goals have come, albeit sporadically, they have been accompanied by many of the same controversies that dogged him back in Milan. His felonious assault on a Dynamo Kiev player earned him the red that helped end City's Europa League hopes, and he was so egregious that Mancini docked him two weeks of wages. Balotelli's 10 goals in all competitions to date have been matched by 10 yellows and two red cards in just 26 appearances. His Italian national team manager wants nothing more to do with him, and last weekend Mario allegedly hawked a loogie into the eye of Manchester United's Anderson after the final whistle, leading to a postgame fracas that detracted from City's epic FA Cup win over United. If the tempestuous antics persist, we'll soon forget Balotelli the soccer talent and just remember Balotelli the human volcano.

FW -- Jermain Defoe, Tottenham

Expectations: Acolytes of the other North London club might have been happy enough just to make the Champions League, but with their diminutive striker coming off a 29-goal season (18 in 31 EPL matches), they allowed themselves to dream of winning the Cup. After all, with Spurs' transcendent midfield of Gareth Bale, Rafael van der Vaart and Luka Modric feeding him a steady diet of sumptuous passes, surely Defoe would feast on them just like he did last season, when he became only the third player to score five times in a Premier League game and the first to accomplish that trick sporting pinkish-silver boots.

The Reality: OK, so he was injured in a Euro qualifier against the Swiss in mid-September and didn't make a return to the side until Thanksgiving, but does that excuse the fact that it took "the best finisher in England" -- as Spurs manager Harry Redknapp referred to him last season -- another four months to finally find the net in a league match? As gifted as Redknapp's midfield maestros are, it doesn't obscure the calamity that is the Spurs strike force. With Peter Crouch best known for his brainless dismissal in the Real Madrid Champions League game that effectively killed off the contest, and Roman "Super Pav" Pavlyuchenko in the witness protection program, Spurs fans can only imagine what might have been if Defoe had been the goal-scoring machine he was in 2009. Perhaps he should have never changed those pink boots.

GK -- The Unholy Arsenal Trinity of Almunia/Fabianski/Szczesny

Expectations: Unlike the other players on this list, who labored under lofty expectations, Arsenal wasn't demanding any jaw-dropping heroics from its keepers. Instead Wenger -- continuing his stubborn refusal to buy an experienced, sure-handed keeper -- maintained his faith in the three-headed monster that he felt could perform the tedious exercise of catching the ball as it entered the goalmouth while the rest of the Gunners dazzled their opponents en route to filling their dusty trophy case with silverware. At least that was the plan.

The Reality: Wenger has yet to learn the lesson that Sir Alex Ferguson has taught him time and again: Kids in the front, adults in the back. It's no accident that United's twin periods of ascendancy were led by Peter Schmeichel and Edwin van der Sar, two rock-solid veteran keepers. Manuel Almunia, whom Wenger was hailing as England's next No. 1 just three years ago, was almost singularly responsible for the Gunners' most pathetic home defeat of the season (a 3-2 dump-fest against West Brom). He was dropped in favor of Lukasz Fabianski -- affectionately known as "Flappyhandski" -- who committed his share of ham-fisted mistakes before injuring himself and forcing Wenger to play Wojciech Szczesny, a cocky 20-year-old who endeared himself to the Emirates faithful with his hilarious Ashley Cole-bashing tweets. The lovefest ended with Woj's howler against Birmingham City in the Carling Cup that cost the Gunners their best chance at silverware. (He also "minded" the net in the Gunners' epic 4-4 implosion at St. James's Park.) After Szczesny injured himself -- he went off in the 17th minute of the second leg of the CL quarterfinal with Barcelona because of a boo-boo on his finger -- Wenger was forced to exhume the desiccated corpse of Jens Lehmann from the graveyard of Arsenal goalkeepers.

The German may be 107, but at least he's a grown-up.

David Hirshey has been covering soccer for more than 30 years and has written about the sport for The New York Times, Time, ESPN The Magazine and Deadspin. He is the co-author of "The ESPN World Cup Companion" and played himself (almost convincingly) in the acclaimed soccer documentary "Once in a Lifetime."

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