Torquay Fans Player of the Year

[Gulliball]

I don't think it will come as too much of a surprise to announce that Luke Young is the TorquayFans.com Player of the Year. His form over the first half of the season was absolutely phenomenal, and until dropping out of the team late on, he was still picking up regular points.

His total of 155 points is the third highest score since this feature started during the 2010/11 season. Only Guy Branston and Chris Zebroski, both from that first season (when we reached the League 2 Play-Off Final) have scored higher. They both used the play-offs to appear in 48 games that season, producing a total that has not been beaten since. Luke Young made only 38 starts this season to achieve his total, and finished with only 4 points fewer than Zebroski and 12 fewer than Branston's record. Had he played in the final run-in (or not been banned for so many games during the season) then he might very well have broken the record.

Aaron Downes produced another very good season to finish 2nd, although not quite as good as his own 2012/13 form, and Toby Ajala also went through the 100 point barrier to finish 3rd.

2014/15 Winner: Luke Young
2013/14 Winner: Krystian Pearce
2012/13 Winner: Aaron Downes
2011/12 Winner: Lee Mansell
2010/11 Winner: Guy Branston

Overall Table

1) Guy Branston (2010/11) 167
2) Chris Zebroski (2010/11) 159
3) Luke Young (2014/15) 155
4) Aaron Downes (2012/13) 145
5) Lee Mansell (2011/12) 143
6) Bobby Olejnik (2011/12) 140
=7) Brian Saah (2012/13) 136
=7) Krystian Pearce (2013/14) 136
9) Aaron Downes (2014/15) 132
10) Mark Ellis (2011/12) 130

Full 2014/15 Results

1) Luke Young - 155
2) Aaron Downes - 132
3) Toby Ajala - 115
=4) Louis Briscoe - 60
=4) Angus MacDonald - 60
6) Levi Ives - 58
7) Ryan Bowman - 55
8) Courtney Richards - 49
9) Krystian Pearce - 47
10) Duane Ofori-Acheampong - 40
11) Martin Rice - 36
12) Durrell Berry - 34
13) Jordan Chapell - 32
14) Tom Cruise - 31
15) Courtney Cameron - 28
16) Ben Harding - 25
=17) Dan Lavercombe - 22
=17) James McQuilkin - 22
19) Dale Tonge - 21
20) Kadell Daniel - 11
21) John Campbell - 8
22) Olivier Gueguen - 7
=23) Aaron Dawson - 5
=23) Ashley Yeoman - 5
25) Josh Wakefield - 4
26) Liam Prynn - 2
27) Jordan Seabright - 1

Those top 11 could make an actual 11, if you played MacDonald at right back, Ajala on the left and Briscoe on the right. Though 12th placed Durrell Berry was the highest scoring out and out right back, despite only playing for 12 league games as neither Tonge (17 apps) or Dawson (14 apps) put up much of a fight.

Dan Lavercombe's impressive 5 game spell (22 points) compares pretty favourably to Jordan Seabright (6 appearances, 1 point) and Martin Rice (35 appearances, 36 points) - the latter coming out on top through sheer number of games played rather than based on his own good form.

I will add a few more details later this week, as well as updating the main page and the home/away attendance breakdown.

[Richinns]

Table says everything it needs to about offering Yeoman another contract.

Sorry - it just is not going to happen for him.

[yellowforever]

How did Levi Ives finish ahead of Ryan Bowman?

Blinkered.

[Gulliball]

It's made up of adding the individual scores from the 46 games. Ives finished ahead of Bowman because he scored more points in more games, as voted for by the fans at the games.

[lucy6lucy]

Based on matches played. The winner would have probably been lavercombe had he played more games.

[tomogull]

As usual, these end of the season stats make interesting reading. Thanks for doing this, Gulliball. It must take some working out week after week. You can have a rest now ...... until the start of next season !

[yellowforever]

It's made up of adding the individual scores from the 46 games. Ives finished ahead of Bowman because he scored more points in more games, as voted for by the fans at the games.

I understand that.

What I don't understand is that how during the course of the season our promising (but frankly average) full back can come ahead of our top scorer.

[taxilady]

cos more people who attended the matches voted for Ives in their top 5 players than did for Bowman...simples ! Seriously though, I don't think Ryan has endeared himself to the Torquay fans amazingly well. Sure he scored, what was it,19 goals ? And didn't score, what, another 30 goals ? Goalmouths gaping, one on ones all missed; might only actually have been 2 or 3 of those, but it felt like 30 ! And that's what we remember at the end of the match, the missed ones that might have levelled the score, or even won the game, in such a dire season.So we didn't include our top scorer in our top 5, cos he disappointed; whereas we remember Ives battling manfully (?) trying to keep the goals out at the other end ? Only offering up an answer to the above question, I haven't voted for Levi much myself, although I did think that he had a good game last Saturday; but on the other hand, Ryan has run around looking disinterested on many an occasion when I thought that if he'd made more of an effort he might well have created a goalscoring opportunity for himself rather than waiting for someone else to play it to his feet.Just my opinion ! Brucie has declared that I know nothing about football; maybe he knows all the answers ?

[Gulliball]

What I don't understand is that how during the course of the season our promising (but frankly average) full back can come ahead of our top scorer.

Well this actually comes down to the very reason that this feature was started to explore. I can try to give you an insight into this, based on the patterns and other things that I have noticed in the last five years of running this.

One thing that was noticeable about Ryan Bowman this season was that he didn’t score many points in games that he didn’t score a goal. Looking at Soccerbase, he scored 12 league goals in 35 starts. Including two braces, that’s 10 games out of a potential 46 that Bowman scored in. Take penalties out of this, which rightly or wrongly don’t always get the same credit as goals from open play, and it gets even lower. If you’re not scoring points in the other games, you’re not going accumulate many points.

Strikers have the potential to pretty much guarantee their inclusion at the top end of the points for each individual game if they score in it. In the past Rene Howe, who scored about the same number of goals as Bowman, got double the points over the season, largely I would think because he offered more to the team, aside from just his goals. The highest ever scoring attacking player was Chris Zebroski in 2010/11, who scored goals but also put in consistently high levels of performance every week.

Full backs have actually not done very well in this feature historically. Even when Kevin Nicholson made the PFA Team of the Year in 2011/12 he was quite a long way behind Olejnik, Mansell and O’Kane, who also made the PFA Team.

Ives did well this year because he scored average points in a lot of the games he played, which was pretty much the opposite of Bowman, who scored points when he scored but didn’t when he drew a blank.

If you read a recent edition of Highway to Hele, I did a brief intro into how this feature started. (Mustapha Carayol in 2009/10 was the inspiration. He was on fire from March onwards but barely played before March, and then did well in the End of Season voting). I was curious about how ‘fair’ it was that more memorable performances counted quite highly in the traditional end of season voting format, when you consider that all 46 games have the potential to give you three points.

That was how this began – all 46 games are added together to give a final total for each player in the same way as the team as a whole accumulates a points total from these games. You might think that being top scorer should automatically put Bowman ahead of a teenage left back, and if that’s your opinion, then fair enough. The idea of this feature was to see if generalisations like this are reasonable - it’s been running for 5 years now, so there’s a bit more data to use (it’s possible to compare from season to season as well as just different players from the same season). I can tell you that Bowman’s points total for a ‘leading goalscorer’ is pretty low, and is the lowest in the five years that this has been running. That is why Ives was able to finish ahead of him despite Bowman finishing as top scorer - a few more goals or better all round performances and Bowman would have been higher (the same as any other player would have).

Maybe Bowman just has the type of game that’s not suited to this type of feature. I imagine someone like Leon Constantine would have a pretty similar record. If Bowman is to do better next season then he’ll need to either score in more than 10 of our games or make more of an impression in games when he doesn’t score. Rene Howe and Elliot Benyon (first spell) have shown that both styles pick up points.

Anyway, this is just a bit of fun, based on some curiosity. It’s not a perfect reflection of what happened this season, and how well each player did, and I would never claim that it is. It’s just a total of all 46 match threads from the full season. The difference between this list and what your reflection of it was when looking back is actually the reason this exists in the first place.

[leetufc]

Really interesting to see the stats over the course of the season - huge thanks to Gulliball for doing this!

No surprise that Young tops the pile.

Also not particularly surprised that Bowman is not higher on the list. He scores goals, but from what I have seen adds very little else to the team. He doesn't work as hard off the ball as he could, and if he doesn't score then it can look like we are playing with a man less. He has also appeared to need several chances in order to convert.

I think he could be a 20 goal a season striker at this level, but his attitude and work ethic at times this season have not endeared him to me.

[DaveysBarTab]

Spot on about Bowman. Missed way too many easy chances and offered very little in a big chunk of games.
I didn't vote, but would of voted for him as he had scored throughout the season, and not Young because of the huge drop in form in 2nd half of season.

What I don't get about Bowman is that he appears(like most of our players) not to improve. I mean, what do they actually practice in training? Does Ryan practice shooting with his other foot.... clearly not. So many players come here and get worse. Chappel another who had something about him and has just got so bad im surprised Grimsby came in for him.

[nickbrod]

Could be interesting to see whether Chapell starts tonight at Eastleigh in the Play-Off Semi 1st Leg (live on BT Sport).

[bobby93]

An interesting read, thanks as ever for compiling the stats.

We all know Young's season faded badly, it says something about the rest of them in a way that even then he was prominent enough to continue to pick up points. I think the summer rest'll do him good in particular.