Player awards: Spurs Women End of Season Fan Survey Results (Part 2)

This is the second of three blogs with the results of the Spurs Women End of Season Fan Survey.

Part 1 summarised fans’ manager and player ratings. This part looks at who fans nominated in six (not entirely serious) categories. Part 3 explores fans’ thoughts on the next season.

So, let’s get started.

1. The Spurs Women player who brought you most joy

Continuing her winning streak, most fans said the player who had brought them joy, is Ash Neville, with a whopping 44 percent of the vote. Not very surprising. After all the first blog written on this site was about how much joy watching Ash play football brings. And she has recently won the Club’s official Fans and Junior Fans Player of the Year award and featured on numerous Teams of the Week and Teams of the Year.

Spurs fans are lucky to have Ash playing for us in her prime and it’s fantastic that she’s signed a contract to keep her at the club until 2026.

In clear second place (with 17 percent of you saying she’d brought you the most joy this year) is our captain, Shelina. Given that Shelina’s on-field role doesn’t allow much scope for creativity (that goal against Brighton not withstanding), this is credit to both Shelina’s on-field defensive prowess and fierce desire to defend our goal, but also her leadership and commitment to the club, and what that means to fans.

2. Your Spurs Women unsung hero

Votes for ‘unsung hero’ were very close – probably becasue in a team without super-stars lots of Spurs players go unsung, which is also a reminder that fans need to come up with more songs for next year – suggestions in the comments below please.

To return to the business in hand: In first place is Maéva, with 23 percent of the vote. She is closely followed by Molly (20 percent) and Ria (17 percent). All three have been magnificent this season in relatively unstarry roles – at centre-back and in defensive-midfield (although Ria did score a couple of goals including one worldie against Manchester United prior to her injury). In other words, all three are the definition of ‘unsung hero’. And without any one of them we would not have finished the season in the position we did.

3. The Spurs Women player you’d get to defend you in a fight!

On a lighter note, when fans were asked who they would pick to defend them in a fight, there were three players well ahead of everyone else: Rachel (on 20 percent), Ash (on 23 percent), and coming out on top, in a second win of these awards is Maéva (with 27 percent). All are never-give-up players, but we’re wondering if Maéva tipped it due to the combativeness she displayed in the North London Derby. Here’s hoping she stays at Spurs because we need that battling spirit.

4. The Spurs Women player with the fanciest footwork

When it comes to fancy footwork there a clear winner. With 40 percent of the vote, Jess was well ahead of second place (Kit, on 11 percent). But interestingly another 12 players were nominated for their fancy footwork by at least one voter. So there’s definitely appreciation of lots of different players’ fancy feet!

5. The Spurs Women player who most often saved our bacon

Bacon-saving is typically a job for the back line and this was reflected in the players who topped this vote.

And after a season in which there was a lot of excellent defending the vote is pretty split. But Ash takes it (with 28 percent) on the back of her league-leading tackling and a series of in-the-box headed clearances.

She is followed by our two centre-backs, who have together had a fantastic season, with Molly in second (22 percent) and Shelina third (17 percent).

Worth a mention, both of our goalkeepers had a share of the vote – and as seems appropriate in a season in which they split goalkeeping duties exactly equally across the season and both put in some game-changing performances, Tinni and Becky are tied, each receiving 11 percent of the vote.

6. The Spurs Women player who’s gone the extra mile with fans

Anyone who’s been to Spurs Women games this season knows how much effort all of our players put in with fans, staying to chat, signing anything that’s put in front of them and taking selfies, whatever the weather. So to go the extra mile means doing a hell of a lot.

There were two players who were well ahead of all others here (together getting about 80 percent of all votes). Both are players who have done a lot both formally and informally.

Ash just takes it with 41 percent of the vote, but Shelina comes in just behind Ash, with 38 percent. Massive thank yous to both.

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That’s it for Part 2 (Awards) of the Fan Survey Results. If you have alternative thoughts, let us know in the comments below.

and if you haven’t yet read Part 1 (manager and player ratings) or Part 3 (looking ahead), both are now available.