Here they are… the results of the 2021–22 SFCU Player of the Season voting!
Thanks first of all to Jubal and James for making this possible. Thanks as well to everyone who voted throughout the year. There was a bit of a drop in votes from last season (-5.9 per match), and 81 unique voters. Special mention to the regulars: four people voted in all 37 competitive matches — @garuna (for the fourth season in a row!), @scottohara (third in a row), @Shoushi (third in a row) and @dryan. A further nine people just missed one match.
And the result: Anthony Cáceres is the 2021–22 SFCU Player of the Season
Cáceres was voted MOTM in 8 of his 33 appearances, and picked up 6 other top-three finishes for a total of 32.5 points. Max Burgess also finished on 32.5 points (!), but only had 6 MOTMs, giving Cáceres the title on a countback. Elvis Kamsoba finished in third on 30.5 points: his early lead was large enough that despite his 10-game injury, he was in equal-first going into the final match, but couldn’t hold on as Cáceres and Burgess both scored.
Those three were a fair way ahead of fourth-placed Patrick Yazbek (19.5 points), followed by Mustafa Amini (15 points), Adam Le Fondre (14 points) and Callum Talbot (14 points).
Here are the top 3 from every match:
Rd
Vs
Result
Voters
MOTM (Votes)
2nd
3rd
1
WSW
D 0-0
58
Anthony Cáceres (1.41)
Elvis Kamsoba
Miloš Ninković
R32
SOl
W 4-2
41
Patrick Wood (1.29)
Max Burgess
Elvis Kamsoba
2
Mac
L 0-1
38
Patrick Wood (1.74)
Anthony Cáceres
Alex Wilkinson
3
NJ
D 2-2
41
Elvis Kamsoba (1.93)
Adam Le Fondre
Paulo Retre
R16
Mac
W 2-0
36
Harry Van Der Saag (2.31)
James Donachie
Adam Le Fondre
4
CCM
L 0-2
32
Elvis Kamsoba (1.59)
Alex Wilkinson
Callum Talbot
5
WP
W 2-1
40
Elvis Kamsoba (1.75)
Patrick Yazbek
Anthony Cáceres
6
Mac
W 3-0
36
Trent Buhagiar & Max Burgess (1.19)
Patrick Yazbek
---
QF
BR
W 1-0
34
Elvis Kamsoba (2.00)
Anthony Cáceres
Paulo Retre
10
BR
D 1-1
32
Elvis Kamsoba (2.66)
Anthony Cáceres
Patrick Yazbek
SF
CCM
L 0-1
33
Andrew Redmayne (3.21)
Elvis Kamsoba
Patrick Yazbek
7
PG
L 1-2
33
Elvis Kamsoba & Anthony Cáceres (1.27)
Patrick Yazbek
---
8
MV
D 2-2
40
Miloš Ninković (1.33)
Tom Heward-Belle
Elvis Kamsoba
12
CCM
W 3-2
42
Anthony Cáceres (2.21)
Mustafa Amini
Elvis Kamsoba
13
AU
W 2-1
34
Tom Heward-Belle (3.06)
Elvis Kamsoba
Mustafa Amini
14
WU
D 1-1
36
Max Burgess (1.75)
Miloš Ninković
Elvis Kamsoba
15
WP
D 1-1
29
Bobô (1.55)
Max Burgess
Mustafa Amini
9
WU
L 0-1
28
Anthony Cáceres (1.61)
Max Burgess
Elvis Kamsoba
16
MC
L 1-2
27
Mustafa Amini (1.78)
Miloš Ninković
Rhyan Grant
17
WSW
L 0-2
34
Callum Talbot (1.71)
Luciano Narsingh
Miloš Ninković
Pre
Kay
W 5-0
29
Mustafa Amini (1.07)
Adam Le Fondre
Patrick Yazbek
26
PG
W 2-0
33
Patrick Yazbek (2.18)
Callum Talbot
Max Burgess
18
WU
W 3-0
30
Miloš Ninković (2.30)
Mustafa Amini
Luciano Narsingh
20
NJ
L 0-2
21
Anthony Cáceres (1.05)
Adrian Segecic
Callum Talbot & Tom Heward-Belle
21
Mac
D 2-2
34
Max Burgess (1.79)
Mustafa Amini
Trent Buhagiar
24
WSW
W 3-2
37
Trent Buhagiar (2.22)
Callum Talbot
Adam Le Fondre
11
MC
L 0-4
23
Max Burgess (1.78)
Patrick Yazbek
Mustafa Amini
23
CCM
W 5-0
28
Adam Le Fondre (2.89)
Max Burgess
Trent Buhagiar
22
AU
L 2-3
20
Anthony Cáceres (1.25)
Callum Talbot
Trent Buhagiar
G1
Jeo
D 0-0
25
Max Burgess (1.40)
Patrick Yazbek
Anthony Cáceres
G2
HGL
D 1-1
24
Trent Buhagiar (1.17)
Max Burgess
Callum Talbot
G3
Yok
L 0-1
23
Max Burgess (1.43)
Patrick Yazbek & Callum Talbot
---
G4
Yok
L 0-3
24
Patrick Yazbek (1.42)
Elvis Kamsoba
Patrick Wood
G5
Jeo
L 2-3
22
Patrick Wood (1.32)
Adam Le Fondre
Patrick Yazbek
G6
HGL
L 0-1
20
Anthony Cáceres (1.25)
Max Burgess
Tom Heward-Belle
19
MV
L 1-4
25
Adam Le Fondre (1.40)
Bobô
Anthony Cáceres
25
BR
L 1-3
22
Anthony Cáceres (2.18)
Max Burgess
Callum Talbot
And the final standings. Players are ranked according to the number of Player of the Season points, then the number of MOTMs, 2nd place finishes, 3rd place finishes and the total number of votes in the case of ties.
Rank
Player
MOTMs
2nd
3rd
Votes
Points
1
Anthony Cáceres
8
3
3
24.09
32.5
2
Max Burgess
6
7
1
23.75
32.5
3
Elvis Kamsoba
6
4
5
23.66
30.5
4
Patrick Yazbek
2
4
6
19.27
19.5
5
Mustafa Amini
2
3
3
10.57
15.0
6
Adam Le Fondre
2
3
2
11.91
14.0
7
Callum Talbot
1
4
4
13.83
14.0
8
Miloš Ninković
2
2
2
13.82
12.0
9
Trent Buhagiar
3
0
3
8.88
11.5
10
Patrick Wood
3
0
1
7.52
10.0
11
Tom Heward-Belle
1
1
2
6.82
6.5
12
Bobô
1
1
0
5.84
5.0
13
Andrew Redmayne
1
0
0
6.98
3.0
14
Harry Van Der Saag
1
0
0
3.86
3.0
15
Alex Wilkinson
0
1
1
9.36
3.0
16
Luciano Narsingh
0
1
1
3.34
3.0
17
James Donachie
0
1
0
3.58
2.0
18
Adrian Segecic
0
1
0
1.90
2.0
19
Paulo Retre
0
0
2
7.26
2.0
20
Rhyan Grant
0
0
1
6.18
1.0
21
Ben Warland
0
0
0
2.71
0.0
22
Connor O'Toole
0
0
0
2.70
0.0
23
Joel King
0
0
0
2.05
0.0
24
Calem Nieuwenhof
0
0
0
0.76
0.0
25
Kosta Barbarouses
0
0
0
0.76
0.0
26
Luke Brattan
0
0
0
0.27
0.0
27
Adam Pavlesic
0
0
0
0.24
0.0
28
Liam McGing
0
0
0
0.10
0.0
29
Corey Hollman
0
0
0
0.00
0.0
You can find the full results for every match and the full standings here, and I also wrote a blog post that contains the results and a few extra graphs and stats.
So you might say Caceres (2782 mins) won it through his volume of decent performances; the other two (Burgess 1783 mins, Kamsoba 1656 mins) were a fair way ahead on average performance.
Yeah, wow. I’d guess that points would generally tend to skew downwards for defenders over attackers, but for a fan favourite like Grant to be wallowing so low really shows what kind of season he had. Barbarouses, who doesn’t even have the excuse of being a defender, well enough said…
No it doesn’t necessarily. It may indicate that a lot of people here, like all of us, have our own particular way of viewing and appreciating football but one that predisposes them to give points to attackers over defenders, and particularly over CBs, or DMs, and to players who dribble a lot and do stepovers (excitement!!) whether or not there was any outcome or product after all that ‘flair’ . Past winners like ADP, Milos1 and Milos2, Adrian and Nicky Carle had both flair and product.
So Grant was not at his best over the whole season but much better than the voting suggests. But, the way we played this year severely cramped his attacking opportunities meaning fewer exciting (!!) opportunities to vote him on. I thought he defended really well apart from a couple of games when he was off. Playing with eg ABJ and Brattan opened up many more opportunities to work down that wide channel than was open to him this season.
FWIW, I remember legions of people here used to froth over Ibini when he played for us while I, as a former CB/DM, considered him a lazy waste of space for shirking all his defensive work and then wasting the ball, that our defence had worked so hard to win and get to him. He had this terrible habit of always losing it stupidly by running it into the third successive opposing defender’s shins. Never looked up to see where he and the other players (including ours) were.
That was also my source of major disagreement with most people here over their adoration of Caceres over the last few seasons. I could not stand to see him waste so much good possession, dribbling along the sideline, or destroying our momentum jogging the ball along the top of the penalty area. However, his game improved greatly this year so I have few complaints about him getting all those points. Still, I think that Burgess is a player who provides much more product in attack and defence and I regularly voted that way.
Interestingly enough, Caceres was only 5th in votes in games we won, 3rd in games we drew, but miles away 1st (13.15 vs 2nd placed Yazbek at 8.99) in games we lost.
Somehow Yazbek was #1 in games we won, #2 in games we lost, but #4 overall. I guess if he’s not having a good game it’s a sign to put money on the draw.
Nick Carle
Alessandro Del Piero
Vedran Janjetović
Miloš Dimitrijević
Filip Hološko
Adrian Mierzejewski
