Player of the year awards

The club have announced that Jon Walters has been named as Players Player of the Year. Probably not too much of a surprise, Emma investigates.

First things first, Jon Walters is thoroughly deserving of any player of the year award on offer this season.

No player has really come close. Pablo, Alan Lee and David Wright have all been excellent over spells of the season, but nobody has matched the consistency of performance that Walters has produced.

There will be those who argue that a player of the year who missed over two months of the season is an indictment on the rest of the teams general level of performance. Certainly, at Christmas we had three players all on course to score 20 goals this season, but the fact that only Walters has an excuse for not managing this target, suggests some level of underachievement in the second half of the season.

But, its unfair that this should detract from Walters achievement of being named as player of the year. He has been the outstanding performer throughout most of his performances this season, which is even more impressive when you consider how many of those performances have been when playing out of position. He has shown that he is capable of a playing to a very high level, but that he also has the versatility to produce at that level in a variety of different positions. The only other player in the squad who can claim to offer that level of versatility is David Wright.

The one sour point to the player of the year awards this year is that the one that counts, the Supporters Player of the Year, will not be announced until after the final game of the season. The tradition of presenting the player of the year trophy in front of the home fans will be sorely missed by supporters this year, but its also the player himself who will miss out too- Jon Walters will miss getting the thanks from the fans that he deserves.

Heres hoping that the club see fit to rectify this situation in the future.