The Fosse Way’s End of Season Awards 2024: Player of the Season
Alongside goal of the season, this is the toughest. After a successful season, the candidates are numerous, with perfectly valid reasons for them. Still, there may be only one! Here are our writers choices for player of the season.
Have we selected yours, have we overlooked any key candidates?
Mad for Mads
Matt Jedruch
Mads Hermansen.
The most fundamental positional upgrade required last summer, even though many of us (myself included) would have settled for Iversen as #1, which now seems laughable. Maybe it's the recency bias associated with watching the Danny Ward debacle of last season, but from the first time I watched Hermansen play, you could see that we had landed an absolute gem of a goalkeeper who still has room for improvement.
Not only is his tactical understanding, consistency, patience, and passing ability absolutely perfect for this Maresca side, but he's also an incredible shot stopper who won us points on his own this season.
Goalkeeping performance is notoriously difficult to track statistically, but of all the 'keepers in this division, nobody bettered Hermansen in PSxG+/- (the difference between post-shot expected goals, and the total number of goals allowed). A fantastic signing who will hopefully be at the Club for many years to come.
Another Great Dane
Becky Taylor
Mads Hermansen, what a revelation. It helps that he seems like a genuinely lovely guy too. He has been pivotal for us to play the system we chose to; 41st in the passing charts of all the players in the league is a hilarious stat but highlights his importance.
He seems a complete goalkeeper who we will inevitably lose for huge money in the coming years. He deserved more clean sheets but got unlucky at times this season, I think we all need to appreciate the player we have, particularly after enduring Danny Ward for a year.
Still all in for Stephy
Iain Wright
My POTS is still the same as it was when I wrote the article at the back end of April.
Stephy Mavididi as POTS won't be everyone's choice, but I think he was simply our main threat across the whole season and the player the opposition were most worried about. I can't wait to see him at Premier League level.
Selecting a Rolls Royce
Helen Thompson
Is it cheating to pick a different choice for this? I have already professed my admiration for the official Leicester City player of the year and The Athletic’s pick for Championship player of the year, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall enough times. Time to vary the choices and select another name.
I could mean Harry Winks or Ricardo Pereira when referencing Rolls Royce, but I’m going for Pereira. Not only has it been great to have him fit enough to complete a Championship season, but having him is just such a luxury. He’s stepped up into a different role this year, mostly deployed as the inverted full-back and adapted well, giving us a touch of class.
It said a lot that when we faced several big games without him, nerves were high. He played his part role in two of the team goals of the season and covered every area of the pitch. Fundamental to the way Maresca needed us to play, he also spent large chunks of the season as captain, leading the side.
