Troy Deeney's Team of the Week: Barkley, Mac Allister, Diallo, Savinho Jimenez, Gibbs-White
2025-01-07
Category: sports

After every round of Premier League matches this season, BBC football pundit Troy Deeney will give you his team and manager of the week.Here are this week's choices. Do you agree? Give us your thoughts using the comments form at the bottom of this page.
Matz Sels (Nottingham Forest): Forest are on an unbelievable run and they did beat Wolves 3-0, but Sels made three massively important saves in the game at 0-0 and 1-0 to keep them ahead.
Milos Kerkez (Bournemouth): He showed a real level of quality and maturity. I know Bournemouth are bringing in another left-back but they may struggle to keep hold of Kerkez. He's a player a lot of other teams would like.Murillo and Nikola Milenkovic (Nottingham Forest): Other teams played well this week but it's another clean sheet for Forest. They're two proper centre-backs and watching them it makes you happy to see them play and I thought they were excellent yet again. They put their bodies on the line. Two solid centre-backs who do their job and give Forest the confidence that no matter what happens they're always going to be in the game with these two.Keane Lewis-Potter (Brentford): He's a winger that has actually filled in and done a job for the team, but he's been excellent for weeks now and it's time to give him some credit. 
Ross Barkley (Aston Villa): I'm really happy for Ross - he's been excellent and it's been great to see him recapture his form. A couple of years ago I thought he was done, I didn't think we'd see him again but he's shown over the last 18 months that with a bit of hard work, self-determination and discipline just how good a footballer he can be. I'm really happy to see him back.Alexis Mac Allister (Liverpool): Every time I watch him he always gets an assist and he always looks like the best player on the pitch. I know that's a bold statement to make when you've got people like Mohamed Salah, but every time I watch him he jumps off the screen to me. Excellent performance against Manchester United, really combative, silky touches and he may go down as a Liverpool legend if he stays there long enough.Morgan Gibbs-White (Nottingham Forest): Got the goal against his old team and handled the occasion really well. If he continues to play as he has been doing recently I think Forest will end up in Europe. Really good performance and now needs to keep it up.
Amad Diallo (Manchester United): The Anfield draw was a coming-of-age game for Diallo. Every now and then you have a game where everyone goes 'there he is' and to do it for Manchester United against Liverpool, who are flying high and everyone thought they'd win by six or seven, he was excellent. The problem he'll have now is that everyone will expect him to deliver those performances week on week. At such a young age everyone will start to look at him as being the main man under this manager so he has a lot of pressure on his shoulders coming soon, but for now let's just appreciate how well he's doing.Raul Jimenez (Fulham): I could've given this to Alexander Isak again because he scored and showed the level he's at, but Jimenez got two goals - yes they were both penalties but you still have to score them. He led the line well and he has to start scoring on a consistent basis for Fulham to get into Europe, which I believe they can. He is Mexico's all-time Premier League goalscorer and he also came back from a horrific injury, so it's great to see him doing really well.Savinho (Manchester City): Another coming-of-age game. Lovely bit of trickery to create the first goal with a deflected cross that goes in. He absolutely tore West Ham apart down the right-hand side and caused problems all day. He got the assist for Erling Haaland's goal with his cross that the keeper and the defender both thought they could get, but they couldn't. Really positive for him but we need to see that more regularly.
Nuno Espirito Santo (Nottingham Forest): An emotional game for him going back to Wolves, his old club, but he delivered. He was calm, collected, every substitution was well thought out and worked well.
Do you agree with Troy's selections? Who would be in your Team of the Week? Have your say using the comments form below: