Yorkshire Team of 2025-26: Hull City and Leeds United dominate XI - with Bradford City, Barnsley FC and Doncaster Rovers inclusions

Eleven clubs, 11 players. But who made the cut for The Yorkshire Post’s Team of the Season for 2025-26?

There were familiar faces - most notably Leeds United captain Ethan Ampadu - and some new ones as well.

All told, six clubs had representatives in the side. Premier League newboys Hull City led the parade with four votes ahead of Leeds (three).

There were also nods to two clubs who reached the play-offs in Middlesbrough and Bradford City, alongside Barnsley and Doncaster Rovers.

The true head-scratching exercise revolved around who to leave out.

No Championship player of the season included in Hayden Hackney, I hear you say? In fairness, he would have been a shoo-in, but for the fact that his season effectively ended in mid-March.

What of the others who missed out?. Injuries in the second half of the season cost Bobby Pointon, while Bantams team-mate Jenson Metcalfe did not quite fly out of the blocks quickly enough. Both can still look back on impressive first seasons in League One, mind.

Karl Darlow was safe and secure in goal for Leeds, but made 22 top-flight starts and not 38. Before New Year’s Day, James Justin started just once at league level in 25-26 - even accounting for his sterling feats in 2026.

Murray Wallace showed the way forward in another difficult season, collectively, for Huddersfield Town, but only got going from winter onwards.

But back to those who did make it. World-Cup bound Ivor Pandur was a worthy inclusion in goal, while it was impossible to ignore the defensive claims of Tigers' team-mate Charlie Hughes in front of him.

Small wonder that Frank Lampard tried so hard to get him last summer and why Hull were not for budging. Hughes had few Championship peers when it came to young centre-halves and was at the heart of a City rearguard who kept three clean sheets in their play-off road to glory.

Now 34, Luke Ayling's reputation as a fans favourite had been transported up the A1 to Teesside.

An unquenchable character, Ayling's leadership skills came to the fore, alongside his coolness under pressure and all-round defensive prowess. A new contract arrived in early spring.

Back at Ayling's former club Leeds, Gabriel Gudmundsson - a marauding presence on the left-hand side of defence - played a big part in the club's consummate return to the big time. The Swede can look back on an outstanding first campaign in the Premier League.

Ampadu's claims in the XI were impossible to ignore once more. The captain's captain, Mr Consistency.

Sergej Jakirovic's own 'MVP' at Hull in Regan Slater is a justified inclusion alongside him in the middle. When he wasn't on deck, City weren't the same. Jakirivoic, who proved himself to be a shrewd judge on Championship matters very quickly, knew that.

Without Owen Bailey's goalscoring input from midfield - 13 league goals - Doncaster Rovers would have been in bother in League One.

At 27, Bailey is in his peak years and Rovers will do well to hold onto him by the time this summer window closes.

At Valley Parade, Antoni Sarcevic emphatically answered the charge that he couldn't crack it in the third tier. He struck 11 times last season and took over the top-scorers’ mantle from a certain Andy Cook.

The three forwards chosen were relatively straightforward decisions in truth.

David McGoldrick may be in the winter of his career at 38, but there's no substitute for class.

He lit up a moribund season for Barnsley with 18 goals and became the first Reds player to score two hat-tricks in the same season since 2004-05 and the oldest player to score a league treble in England's top four tiers since Jamie Cureton in April 2015.

Naming Oli McBurnie in the side was probably the easiest decision of the lot.

Talisman is an over-used term in football, but when it comes to McBurnie. Where would Hull have been without his goalscoring contributions. Not just at Wembley, think getting into the play-offs first of all. 'Don't worry, we have McBurnie' as Acun Ilicali tellingly said.

A renaissance season for Dominic Calvert-Lewin also deserved to be rewarded. He joined a select group of just 15 players to score in seven successive Premier League games and lifted the player-of-the-month gong for December.

As for the manager of the year? Well, that's a three-way tie between Daniel Farke, Jakirovic and Graham Alexander.

Yorks XI: Pandur; Ayling, Hughes, Gudmundsson; Sarcevic, Bailey, Ampadu, Slater; McGoldrick, McBurnie, Calvert-Lewin. Substitutes: Hackney, Morris, Ingelsson, Okafor, Molyneux, Rodon, Brooks, Stach, Pointon, Metcalfe.