Voting has commenced for Swansea City’s player of the season award and picking a winner won’t be easy.
The Swans are sat in mid-table following a transitional season which has had its fair share of ups and downs. Nevertheless, there is no shortage of candidates for the prestigious award, with several players excelling under Russell Martin. It’s genuinely difficult to decide on a single player who is most deserving of the gong. Any club’s top scorer is bound to feature quite prominently in a player of the season discussion and Joel Piroe will rightly be many people’s favourite.
His first season at the Swansea.com Stadium has been a resounding success. At the time of writing, he has scored 20 goals in all competitions and they have come in all shapes and sizes, from cool one-on-one finishes to long-range thunderbolts. He’s also played an important role in creating goals for others. He has looked equally brilliant both as a lone striker and as an attacking midfielder, and oozes class in everything he does.
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Piroe has been a joy to watch and a vital figure for the Swans since joining from PSV last summer, but that won’t necessarily guarantee him the prize. His partner in crime, Jamie Paterson, has also been a critically important player for Swansea during his debut campaign at the club.
The former Bristol City and Nottingham Forest man took to life under Martin like a duck to water. His silky feet and eye for a pass have rendered him indispensable in a squad which has otherwise looked low on creativity for much of the season.
Eight assists makes him one of the most productive creators in the division and he is arguably the player Swansea struggle most to replace when he’s not in the side. An unsavoury contract dispute halfway through the campaign may put some fans off voting for Paterson but his importance to the side was made clear during his month-long absence as Swansea’s cutting edge all but vanished without the midfielder in the side. And while his controversial dispute with the club was unpleasant, his attitude and performances since returning to the first team have been exemplary.
The Swans’ midfield has arguably been its greatest strength and two men in the centre of the park have been among the squad’s most consistent performers. Matt Grimes has already won the award once, back in the 2018-19 season, and the captain has once again led by example throughout the current campaign. He is the man who constantly keeps the ball moving, an essential element of Martin’s passing style.
No player in the Championship comes close to Grimes in this department. Ahead of the Barnsley game, Grimes had made exactly 4,000 passes, with a success rate of 91 per cent. To put this in context, the Championship midfielder with the second highest number of passes is Sheffield United’s Oliver Norwood, who has only made 2,399 passes. This means Grimes has made 67 per cent more passes than the next most proficient midfield passer.
Fulham defender Tim Ream is the only player other than Grimes to manage more than 3,000 passes this season, but he’s made 927 fewer passes than the Swans’ captain this term. A popular misconception is that Grimes’s passes are all sideways and backwards, designed to bolster the possession stats but with little additional value. Grimes actually rates very highly for progressive passes, and plays a vital role in advancing possession.
Add to this his superb defensive work and Grimes can once again hold his head up high as one of the best midfielders in the Championship. He’s been well-supported this season by a young star with the world at his feet.
Flynn Downes has blossomed since his move from Ipswich, combining defensive excellence with accomplished passing to become one of the Championship’s best holding midfielders. Just like any other Swansea midfielder, Downes is very confident on the ball, with some of the best passing stats in the division and the kind of calmness under pressure you’d expect to see from a bomb disposal expert.
He famously loves a meaty tackle which is always bound please fans, but he also has natural leadership skills and was even handed the captain’s armband, aged just 22, against Southampton in the FA Cup. Downes is a wonderful player who has given Swansea’s midfield a delightful blend of physicality, tenacity and intelligence. Let’s just hope the club can keep hold of him in the summer.
One player at the opposite end of the experience scale is Kyle Naughton. The Swans’ oldest outfield player was asked to play a new position at the start of the season, smack bang in the middle of a back three. This position is usually reserved for the biggest, nastiest defender in the side so Naughton, who has played the vast majority of his career at full-back, seemed a strange pick for this role.
On the basis of this season’s performances, the 33-year-old was born to play in this position. He has been a key figure at the back, marshaling the defence and reading the game superbly, constantly offering cover on the regular occasions when the back line became overstretched.
His passing game has also been superb, enabling Swansea to pass out from the back in a way which was so alien to most of the squad when Martin first arrived in August. Naughton’s years of experience have been invaluable and his presence in what has become a very young side has been incredibly beneficial. He adds wisdom, leads by example and makes life easier for others around him. It was announced this week that the veteran had signed a richly deserved contract extension and the response from Swansea’s supporters was universal delight, showing how highly he is regarded by the Jack Army.
There are others who have played exceptionally well for long periods this season. Ryan Manning has covered several positions and was particularly impressive during the first half of the season as a left-sided centre-back, another who has surprised people while playing in an unfamiliar position. Ben Cabango has had to adapt his game to fit his manager’s plans and it hasn’t always been smooth sailing for the Welsh international but he has grown as the season’s progressed and during the second half of the season, his quality has been clear for all to see.
Michael Obafemi is another who’s excelled since Christmas. The former Southampton man struggled to establish himself initially due to the form of Piroe but over recent months he has undoubtedly been one of Swansea’s top performers, having well and truly discovered his scoring touch. These three players are unlikely to be in serious contention for the main award but have still put in seriously impressive shifts, without quite having the consistency of others I have named.
This will not go down as a vintage season for Swansea City but there have still been plenty of individuals who have stood out and made a mark during this campaign. Picking out just one for this kind of recognition will be extremely difficult.
