Seemingly it's that time of year again when the league season ends and we all praise our respective divinities that there is still a month of international football to be enjoyed. As such, this is the period during which every footballing publication and website announces their end-of-season awards, each of them more trivial and less well-thought-out than the last. Thus, I am proud to announce the winner of the most trivial and least well-thought-out award of all - The Shed End's Player of the Season award.

 

Anyone unfamiliar with the forum may not be aware that in addition to being an incorrigible drunk, I also maintain the site's Man of the Match Excel spreadsheet and keep a tally of all votes cast in every MOTM poll throughout the season. This season has been particularly interesting, not only because that beautiful man Claudio Ranieri somehow pulled off one of the most extraordinary feats in the history of the sport and, in doing so, saved football from the evil clutches of Tottenham and Arsenal, but also because our own season was effectively split into two halves: the José period and the Guus period. The performances of certain individual players were of strikingly better quality in the latter period, and the voting reflects that, with a few quite unexpected results for the final tally. If you will indulge me, I will analyse the two periods separately before revealing the final winner.

 

First, some introductory stats which might provide some context:

 

Total number of games: 52

Total number of votes cast: 1546

Average number of votes per game: 29.7

Game with highest number of votes cast: Crystal Palace (A PL): 61

Game with lowest number of votes cast: Man City (A PL); Sunderland (A PL): 4

 

Ordinarily I don't drone on quite so much when doing this, but I thought these were quite revealing, and also rendered one the measuring sticks we tend to employ somewhat irrelevant. The total number of votes cast was over a thousand lower than it was last season (2648) and the average number of votes roughly 20 lower (49). I can only speculate as to the reasons for this (my guess is that it's a combination of poor performances leading people to conclude that nobody deserved a MOTM award, also then finding the idea of ruminating over a game afterwards less appealing), but I feel that a vote is more valid and more rich the more participants it has.

 

We have three measuring sticks: total number of MOTM awards, total number of votes, and a points system in which the player finishing 1st receives 3 points, the player in 2nd receives 2 points and the 3rd place receives 1 point. Considering there were games with as few voters as 4, that means that a player could (and did) win a MOTM award with as few as 2 votes, and could get a point with as few as 1. Thus I decided to leave out the points system as a form of tie-breaking, especially as you get quite a lot of what I assume are joke votes (you'll notice Cuadrado has 3).

 

So here's what the table looked like under José:

 

And here's what it looked like under Guus:

 

 

Obviously I don't need to point out every individual difference, but the most striking one to me is the enormous contrast between how well Willian was received under José (and how poorly under Guus), and vice versa for Fabregas. You can also see how a player can pick up quite a few awards despite not actually getting a particularly high number of votes (e.g. Loftus-Cheek).

 

Anyway I'm sure by this point all of you capable of basic arithmetic have realised that:

 

 

 

Cesc Fabregas is The Shed End's 2015/16 Player of the Season.

 

 

So via most MOTM awards:

1) Fabregas (8 awards)

2) Willian (6 awards)

2) Hazard (6 awards)

4) Costa (4 awards)

4) Begovic (4 awards)

 

Via total votes:

1) Willian (202 votes)

2) Fabregas (165 votes)

3) Mikel (122 votes)

4) Costa (117 votes)

5) Pedro (112 votes)

 

Via 'points':

1) Willian (39 points)

2) Fabregas (29 points)

3) Costa (23 points)

4) Hazard (23 points)

5) Mikel (21 points)

 

Other stats (feel free to stop reading at any point):

 

Premier League:

Fabregas leads the way with 7 awards, Hazard received 6 (mostly in a late surge), Begovic received 4 and Willian received 3.

 

Champions League:

Willian is predictably the winner here with 3 awards, Costa received 2 and Rahman, Matic and Loftus-Cheek each received 1.

 

FA Cup/League Cup:

Considering how short our League Cup defence was, I thought it better to simply lump these together. There is no overall winner; Fabregas, Zouma, Oscar, Cahill, Ramires and Mikel each got 1 award.

 

 

As this was the first season in which we didn't have a emphatic winner in all three scoring categories, it has probably been the most interesting to observe, but the lack of participation I described above does lead me to wonder whether a rethink in the scoring systems may be a good idea. It does seem a little unfair on Willian that he romped the two secondary categories but ultimately didn't get the prize, but the POTY award has always gone to the player with the most individual awards. If nothing else it means we can moan about first-past-the-post for a while since we currently have no actual football to moan about.

 

Here is the full table if anyone is interested:

 

 

 

Thanks for reading!

Just goes to show how sh*t we really were this season.

Damn it, Thought Falcao had it in the bag.

Thanks for taking time to do all that...amazed Fabregas finished top...had a few good games under Guus, but nothing to merit any accolades...but then who does?

The fact hazard finished third shows the system has to be flawed...not a criticism, but maybe indication of how voting tailed off in second half of season so players were given more ranking points than they deserved?

Edited May 19, 201610 yr by The Brit

Hell of an effort mate, more than most of the players put in this season. Cheers.

Yeah cheers for doing that mate.

Appreciated by this Blues fan.

Thanks for taking time to do all that...amazed Fabregas finished top...had a few good games under Guus, but nothing to merit any accolades...but then who does?

The fact hazard finished third shows the system has to be flawed...not a criticism, but maybe indication of how voting tailed off in second half of season so players were given more ranking points than they deserved?

 

I was amazed too, Willian was miles ahead until Fabregas (who as you can see from the José table was absolutely nowhere in the rankings and sorely out of favour on the forum) won 5 out of 6 consecutive MOTM awards when he hit form in January and February.

 

Hazard's revival was similar in that he won the last four games in a row, and by this point a lot of people had almost completely given up (he won Sunderland away with three votes for example), although the lack of votes certainly wasn't helped by me sometimes putting the threads up late, either because I was working, watching the match elsewhere or just absent through my own boneheadedness.

 

Admittedly a ratings system like this is always going to be flawed; firstly because everyone will have viewed the game differently and will have a different idea of what constitutes a man-of-the-match performance, and secondly because this is a purely quantitative system and has no real appreciation for nuance (which is why I had a crack at the points system a couple of years ago) and a concept of 'best player' is almost entirely qualitative. It might be interesting to trial a player ratings system, or perhaps some sort of system in which fans rank the players and they are scored that way. It would help players like Azpilicueta who are criminally underrated in systems like this one; certainly I don't think you'd find many Chelsea fans who agree that there have been 18 players in the squad who have been better than him this season!

Maybe MOTM is not intended to be added up and equated to establish a player of the year, and should only be used on a match by match basis.

 

Yeah sure you can add it all up at the end, but like you said, that's when it becomes flawed.

 

I think a general POTY poll is all that is needed at the end of the season to find out a collective forum consensus.

Good work Ploks. That must have taken you nearly as long as it took you to vote 122 times for Mikel.

Edited May 19, 201610 yr by Liam

Good work Ploks. That must have taken you nearly as long as it took you to vote 122 times for Mikel.

 

Well I had to find some use for those alt-accounts now I'm no longer allowed to moonlight as Blue Daze.

Well played Ploks.

Interesting the slide for Willian post Guus. I think it would correlate also with the point at which he stopped scoring free kicks.

Did he score any in the second half of the season?

Ok, how about this as an idea, I ripped off WAGNH figured out how to create a player ratings form on Google, which we could run alongside the MOTM threads next season. This might provide some more interesting numbers. Here's an example:

 

 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1hcV_THrPGk0TN3eq0os1BoZZP6RIPev3bBOCv0cq2JU/viewform

 

 

(Does anyone know how to embed this?)

Cheers Ploks, great stuff as awlays

Ok, how about this as an idea, I ripped off WAGNH figured out how to create a player ratings form on Google, which we could run alongside the MOTM threads next season. This might provide some more interesting numbers. Here's an example:

 

 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1hcV_THrPGk0TN3eq0os1BoZZP6RIPev3bBOCv0cq2JU/viewform

 

 

(Does anyone know how to embed this?)

 

I suggested soething like that a while ago. I could build a module they could install on the forum to have it appear on the match threads and let people vote and it would do all this stuff automatically. It was poo-pooed though 

Let's give it a go for next season Zeta. If you're still happy to do it we could get it up and running and test it before season starts.

We could make an effort to vote on the American friendly's

9/10, one of wim wenders best.

9/10, one of wim wenders best.

 

Twas. Not even nominated by the Academy for best foreign language film in '77 (most probably because Hopper had burnt so many in Hollywood) who also erred in awarding the oscar to the wrong film: should of gone to Bunuel for the masterful That Obscure Object of Desire. Anyway - TAF - Hopper as Fabregas perhaps & Ganz as the nobbled Falcao? 

Let's give it a go for next season Zeta. If you're still happy to do it we could get it up and running and test it before season starts.

Ill have a play around and see what i can come up with. Do you know the version number and name of tje foeum software you are using?

Drop Mod a PM for exact details.

Throw back to when Torres won player of the season....

 

Still tickles me...

Edited May 31, 201610 yr by mclovin83

Surprised Torres didn't win it again.

Surprised Torres didn't win it again.

 

 

It's been two years since he left. Let it go, just. You can do it, I know you can.

 

It's been two years since he left. Let it go, just. You can do it, I know you can.

 

 

I thought the therapy sessions had worked. But then I watched him stupidly get sent off in the semi-final of the CL and then when, remarkably, he was picked to play in the final he did his best stone statue impression. It regressed me Ampie. Memories of the hours and hours of total sh*teyness from him in a blue shirt came flooding back. And the Alice band. My God.

 

Hopefully when he retires the nightmares will stop and I can let it go. Then maybe you also will be able to let it go about me letting it go. It isn't healthy for either of us.