The Premier League Underwhelming XI of the season

Defense:

John Stones (Manchester City)

If there is one City player that could skip your mind this season, it has to be Stones

If there is one player from the Manchester city squad this season who can be accommodated into this XI, it has to be John Stones.

The 23 year old moved from Everton to City two seasons before, for a whopping €55 million, and was expected to be the backbone of the defense for years to come.

Things could not have gone worse for him. After a few shocking errors last season that got him a lot of slack, and an unnecessarily large price tag hanging over him, Stones failed to reciprocate his form at Everton.

This season has been better, but still nowhere near the quality he seems to contain.

The unexpected rise of Nicolas Otamendi and Vincent Kompany's not-so-injury-ridden season, meant that Stones had to share his duties with the more experienced centre-backs in the team.

The arrival of Laporte in the winter meant that his time was further cut shot, and the Englishman had to spend most of his time watching from the bench.

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Wes Morgan (Leicester City)

Morgan looks to be at the end of his days in the top flight of English football

Few can forget Wes Morgan's heroic defending during Leicester City's remarkable title-winning campaign two years back.

As both captain and defender, he was one of the most important reasons for the foxes to bolt into the limelight with their antics.

Yet another case of age catching up with the player, the 34-year-old has seen a considerable dip in form.

Claude Puel's Leicester were supposed to be more defensively organized than they were under Ranieri, but their captain's woeful season meant that they finished only a disappointing 9th in the table.

Morgan has never been the fastest defender on the pitch, and he relied a lot on his physicality and positioning to bully strikers off the ball. This season, however, has seen him on the receiving end of the same.

With younger players like Maguire and Dragovic stepping up, Morgan could be slowly eased out of the side in the coming years.

His legacy will always remain as Leicester's PL winning captain, but as time goes by, he will have to move on.

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Shkodran Mustafi (Arsenal)

The German has been error-prone the entire season and will not be going to Russia

It sums up Arsenal's season when two of their players in charge of defensive duties make it on to this list.

Mustafi was on the verge of leaving Arsenal at the start of this season, but ultimately stayed. As far as Arsenal fans are concerned, they got the short end of that stick.

The German centre-back has endured an awful season at the back for Arsenal, often being responsible for errors leading to goal (Aguero's goal in the Carabao Cup final comes to mind), or a general lack of positional awareness.

The consequence of this is him being left out of Germany's provisional squad for the 2018 World Cup, and there is no reason to contradict the decision.

His future at the club seems full of doubts as well, and with Koscielny injured for a long-time, Arsenal need a stronger CB pairing to mount a proper defense next season.

Surprisingly, Mustafi has the odd goal on him (3 goals and one assist in the league) and it has resulted in him being part of WhoScored's team of the season.