As in previous years, GrandOldTeam.com has run a Man of the Match poll for every first team game in season 2023/24 and with the season now completed, it’s time to reveal precisely what all those polls added up to and who was the GOT Player of the Season.
Throughout the season, the Man of the Match polls reflected the up and down nature of the season as disappointing performances and results generally resulted in lower than expected voting numbers, interspersed with improved voting on fine individual performances and of course the results that kept the points total ticking along even though many of us were stressed throughout the season as things looked to get progressively more threatening to our top flight status – with or without the interference of the ten-point deduction imposed on the team, manager and fans on the back of comprehensively bad management and accounting by sections of the hierarchy.
The manager, the players and especially the fans dug in and dug deep. Results went against us, refereeing and VAR decisions too conspired to raise blood pressure levels… and then the team would come through with a big win and individual players raised their game resulting in peaks and troughs in the Man of the Match voting numbers.
Looking at the season chronologically, August saw four games and four different MotM poll winners with Beto polling the most votes for the month, courtesy of his debut effort in a 2-1 Carabao Cup win away at Doncaster Rovers.
September saw five games and five different poll winners with James Garner leading the way on the back of an excellent showing in the 2-1 Carabao Cup win at Aston Villa.
Four games in October again saw the individual game polls spread over four different players and the most votes claimed across the month by the emerging and impressive Jarrad Branthwaite.
November only saw three games but as suggested above, an individual player stepped up to the plate and in a clean sweep of the voting on all three games, Vitalii Mykolenko amassed a crushing victory in the MotM polls.
Eight games were shoe-horned into December and once again, our Ukrainian International left back put his concerns over family and friends back home to one side and Vitalii Mykolenko again topped the polling across the games taking two more game polls with the other six spread around six different players.
The turn of the year saw Jordan Pickford given a bit of a breather in January and back-up goalkeeper Joao Virginia made the most of his three appearances to top the polling twice with Mykolenko, Amadou Onana and Ben Godfrey on his return to the first team sharing the other three game polls.
Four games in February saw James Tarkowski take two polls with Idrissa Gana Gueye and Jarrad Branthwaite one each, the increasingly impressive Cumbrian claiming more votes on the back of his point-earning strike away at Brighton.
Only three games in March due to the Goodison ‘Derby’ having to be re-scheduled into what was looking an increasingly difficult April nevertheless, the voting threw up a tie for MotM in the loss away at Old Trafford between Jordan Pickford and Jarrad Branthwaite with the latter again claiming the most votes across the month.
The fixture schedule for April looked daunting but, apart from the shellacking away at Chelsea, it was a terrific month for the Blues and the other results played an enormous part in the club retaining its top flight status for yet another season. Jordan Pickford, Jarrad Branthwaite, Andre Gomes and Dominic Calvert-Lewin – for his towering header that sank the RS title hopes – all polled well but, it was the unexpected goalscoring exploits of Idrissa Gana Gueye that claimed the most votes.
And so to the final three games in May with three more poll winners in Jarrad Branthwaite, DCL and again, Idrissa Gana Gueye taking top spot.
Needless to say, but, we’ll say it anyway, we thank you enormously for supporting the polls as without your contribution, we wouldn’t be able to produce these results.
And that brings us to the final totting up of all the votes polled to give us the top five players as voted for on a game by game basis by you, the fans and supporters of the GrandOldTeam.com Man of the Match polls.
In fifth place having tallied 6.60% of the total votes polled – Everton and England’s Number One, Jordan Pickford.
In fourth place with 7.80% of the votes on the back of a late season surge of goals and points, our Senegalese midfield dynamo – Idrissa Gana Gueye.
In third place, having quietly and steadily amassed points, taking a creditable 8.99% of the total votes was James Garner.
In second position with an outstanding period through November and December that went a long way to securing him 11.19% of the total polls, our runner-up was Vitalii Mykolenko.
And that just leaves us with the winner and having secured 17.38% of the total votes cast, your GrandOldTeam.com Player of the Season as voted for in the Man of the Match polls… none other than Jarrad Branthwaite.
