The idea is that each game counts for 1/48th of the final total, therefore every game counts equally. The Tuesday night away at Accrington when we lose 5-0 was a potential three points in the same way that a home victory over Plymouth is worth three points, but one will always be remembered better than the other when reflecting back on the season. Likewise, performances towards the end of the season are more valued in the traditional player of the year voting format. With this, every game is scored on an individual basis, and is then added together to give the final total, which over the full season should remove as much bias as possible and hopefully give an accurate measure.
Over the season 3163 individual votes were cast, giving it quite a large sample size to be as reflective as possible of the fans opinions.
The winner for the 2011/2012 season is...
...
Lee Mansell.
Full results:
1) Lee Mansell (143)
2) Bobby Olejnik (140)
3) Mark Ellis (130)
4) Brian Saah (111)
5) Rene Howe (106)
6) Eunan O'Kane (99)
7) Joe Oastler (84)
8) Damon Lathrope (69)
9) Kevin Nicholson (65)
10) Danny Stevens (64)
11) Chris Robertson (53)
12) Ian Morris (36)
13) Taiwo Atieno (32)
14) Billy Bodin (29)
15) Ryan Jarvis (19)
16) Chris McPhee (12)
17) Angus MacDonald (7)
=18) Billy Kee (2)
=18) Lloyd Macklin (2)
=18) Lathanial Rowe-Turner (2)
It went to the final day of the season, and Bobby could have snatched it with a man of the match performance in the last game of the season, that's how tight it was.
As a comparison to last season when the top eight were: 1st Branston (167), 2nd Zebroski (159), 3rd Mansell (117), 4th O'Kane (89), 5th Nicholson (79), 6th Stanley (74), 7th Bevan (61) and 8th Ellis (59) - The top scorers finished with a higer points total (includes one extra game of course as we reached the PO Final last year), but 2011/12 saw a far higher concentration of players below that with 6 scoring 100 (Eunan got 99, so close enough). Last season also saw 30 different players score points, a full ten more than this season. In the 20 players scoring points this year, the bottom four scored theirs in one game, leaving us with just 16 players over the season.
Full results for last season are here: http://www.torquayfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1784" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The individual man of the match winners across the season were:
Olejnik - 9
Howe - 8
Saah - 7.5
Mansell - 6
Ellis - 4.5
O'Kane - 4
Stevens - 3
Bodin - 1
Lathrope - 1
Robertson - 1
Oastler - 1
Morris - 1
McDonald - 1
(Saah and Ellis were joint winners at AFC Wimbledon away)
So although Mansell won the overall award, he won less individual man of the match awards than Olejnik, Howe and Saah, suggesting that he was indeed the most consistent over the season. Ellis, Lathrope, Robertson, Oastler and Nicholson were similarly consistent, scoring points regularly across the year.
By month this broke down to the following:
August - Mansell
September - Mansell and Bodin
October - Mansell
November - Howe
December - Olejnik
January - Ellis
February - Saah
March - Howe
April - Saah
May - Saah
This does tend to agree with Martin Ling's assesment that it was a season of two halves, with Mansell and Saah clear winners of each. The difference was that Saah had a very poor start whereas Mansell scored points regularly over the second half of the season, even when he wasn't on the same sublime form of the opening months. In November Saah was 66 points behind Mansell and the other front runners, which was too much to catch up, even with the form he showed in the final months of the season.
Finally, the last stats are total points, divided by starts, to show how (in theory at least) the table would have looked if everyone had started the same number of games. This was more interesting last season when we had loanees arrive and depart and players come and go, this season has been a settled side but it still gives a fairly interesting result.
The winner here was Mark Ellis with an average of 3.61 points per start (having started 'only' 36 games, a full 11/12 behind Bobby, Mansell, O'Kane, Nicholson and Oastler).
2nd was Mansell (3.04), 3rd Saah (3.00), 4th Olejnik (2.92) and 5th Howe (2.86)
As a comparison to last year the top five were: 1st Craig Stanley (3.89), 2nd Guy Branston (3.48), 3rd Chris Zebroski (3.38), 4th Gavin Tomlin (2.93) and 5th Eunan O'Kane (2.62). In each year the winner has been different from the overall winner.
Full results for last season here: http://www.torquayfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1788" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
That said, the Player of the Year is the player who did it over 48 games, and Lee Mansell was a fully deserving winner.
I hope you enjoyed reading this, and if you did, please contribute to the threads next season.
