From Chelsea’s N’Golo Kante to Liverpool’s Sadio Mane — the five best Premier League players of 2016

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As 2016 begins to wind down, Richard Jolly picks the five Premier League players who have excelled the most over the past 12 months.

N’Golo Kante (Leicester City/Chelsea)

Sometimes assessing one team’s improvement and another’s decline can appear very complicated. At others, however, it seems remarkably simple. This time last year, Leicester were top and Chelsea 15th. Now Chelsea are first and Leicester are 15th. Meanwhile, N’Golo Kante has swapped the King Power Stadium for Stamford Bridge. That is the Kante effect. An all-action player is a catalyst, spurring Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez on to new heights last season and helping Eden Hazard and Diego Costa return to their best this. The Frenchman seems to have that enviable ability to dovetail with anyone else, whether in a counter-attacking team or a more progressive outfit. He made Leicester’s 4-4-2 work and has had the same effect with Chelsea’s 3-4-2-1. No one made more tackles or interceptions last season. Now he is the midfielder with the most interceptions again, showing a consistency that has spanned a calendar year when Kante’s teams have amassed 85 points. So far.

Jermain Defoe (Sunderland)

It appeared the definition of desperation, giving a three-and-a-half year contract on big wages to a 32-year-old striker who had seemed to signal a willingness to wind down his career by going to Major League Soccer. Instead Gus Poyet’s January 2015 move for Defoe looks Sunderland’s best bit of business for years, especially as he swapped the striker for the eternally unproductive Jozy Altidore. Defoe has confounded doubters — his own managers among them — by proving he can play alone in attack. He seems to have reversed the ageing process, becoming more prolific at a time when pacey players should be in decline. He has kept on scoring, despite playing with some terrible teammates and in a side that made the joint worst start ever to a Premier League campaign. His 2016 has brought 19 league goals already. He made a huge contribution to keeping Sunderland up last season. He seems set to do the same again.

Harry Kane (Tottenham Hotspur)

Kane had his now familiar slow start to this season. He was then out for a month and a half. He is still the leading Premier League scorer in 2016 with 21. It illustrates that when he has found form, he excels at maintaining it. Some strikers’ scoring sprees last for a handful of games. Kane sustains his over large swathes of a season. He had a run of 29 goals in 38 games last season, which shows his sheer relentlessness. He powered Tottenham into title contention in May for the first time in decades. He threatens to drag them back into the Uefa Champions League again. Both with his dogged enthusiasm and his status as a youthful Englishman, he has come to personify Tottenham. His loyalty, in signing an extended contract, has shown a club whose identity is evolving for the better are no longer seen as a stepping stone by the ambitious.

Sadio Mane (Southampton/Liverpool)

Like Kante, a player whose impact on two teams can be identified. Mane helped Southampton to their highest Premier League finish, sixth, and has now added another element to Liverpool, propelling them into the title race and scoring a winner on his Merseyside derby debut. The Senegalese’s status has risen, too, with a move to Anfield a recognition of his excellence. Admittedly, his first goal of the calendar year did not arrive until March 20, but it was proof of his ability to trouble elite opponents: a double against Liverpool was followed by a hat-trick against Manchester City. He scored on his Liverpool debut against Arsenal and has gone on to prove particularly productive at Anfield. His pace and ability to materialise anywhere across the forward line make Mane appear a perfect fit for a Jurgen Klopp side yet, with his differences to Philippe Coutinho, Roberto Firmino and Adam Lallana, he has brought another dimension.

Wes Morgan (Leciester City)

Yes, the year ends with Leicester at risk of relegation and Morgan resembling the player he was two seasons ago, but that should not obscure memories of his spring transformation into a defensive colossus who anchored a back four that kept 11 clean sheets in 15 games in the title run-in and the inspirational leader of a side who held their nerve when others lost theirs. Nor should it camouflage the fact that a player who had seemed a Championship stalwart captained a Premier League-winning team. Others to have lifted the trophy have tended to come from the bracket of the greats and the very goods — Roy Keane, Eric Cantona, John Terry, Tony Adams, Patrick Vieira, Vincent Kompany — and then there is Morgan. Like Leicester’s, his is an achievement that should echo through the ages. The image of him leading Leicester’s celebrations will continue to define 2016, the year of the outsider.