Scoring the players: Spurs Women End of Season Fan Survey Results (Part 1)

It’s that fun time when we get to see how Spurs fans rated individual players this season. What do fans say was their worst and best game? Who has been voted as having the fanciest footwork, who’s most often saved our bacon, what we need to do over the summer to be ready to compete next year? All that and a bunch of other things in Parts 1, 2 and 3 of the End of Season Fan Survey Results.

Part 1 explores how fans scored our manager and players, and which games were your favourite and low points. You can also read Part 2 (player awards) and Part 3 (looking ahead).

Before we kick off, a massive thanks to all Spurs Women fans who filled out the survey. And a quick proviso: what’s here is only the views of those who filled it out (it was advertised over two weeks on twitter from the @spurswomenblog account and retweeted by other spurs women supporters and the supporters group). It is not representative of all Spurs Women fans – for instance it probably didn’t catch fans who are not on twitter or are less engaged with Spurs Women. So it’s entirely possible that you didn’t answer the survey and have completely different opinions. If so and you want to respond, there’s a place to leave a comment below. You’re also welcome to comment if you share the views here.

Now to the results…

The manager

Fans have a lot of appreciation for the work Rehanne’s been doing. Asked to rate her performance out of 5, Rehanne received an average score of 4.14. Most impressively no-one scored her lower than 3/5, which suggests pretty universal satisfaction. Just 11 percent scored her a 3. Most people (61 percent) gave Rehanne a score of 4/5, but more than a quarter (28 percent) gave her the maximum possible, 5/5.

Not bad for a first full season in charge.

The high rating also reflects the widespread aclaim Reanne’s received for her work, including being named as Manager of the Year in The Guardian and The Telegraph.

The players

Looking at our players, there’s quite a bit of variety in fans’ ratings.

Unsurprisingly, given she’s just won the official Spurs Supporters’ and Junior Supporters Player of the Year Awards, Ash has the highest average score (4.4). But close behind her is Molly (with an average of 4.3), and with more maximum (5/5) scores than any other player. Notably Molly, along with Ria (and like Rehanne) was not scored lower than 3 by anyone, meaning that fans’ impressions of Molly and Ria are exclusively positive. With a very few exceptions, fans also gave overwhelmingly positive scores (4s and 5s) for Rachel, Shelina and Maéva.

Kerys, Tinni, Evelina and Kit were given the top score (5/5) about 20 percent of the time, and like those above them, very few people score any of these players below a three. Becky received somewhat fewer 5/5s but is otherwise similar to these players. Notably all of our most consistent starters are in these top groups. This shows a high level of fan recognition and support for our starting line-up in what has been a very successful season.

A little lower in terms of their average scores, Jess, Kyah, Josie and Azzy are given top marks by slightly fewer people, but like those above them, are more often scored positively (4s and 5s) as opposed to negatively (1s and 2s). Azzy is perhaps the most borderline, which may speak to where she is in her career – still making mistakes, but also showing moments of skill and lots of potential – and how different fans weigh the two sides of that up when rating her.

Below Azzy, are players who are rated highly (4s and 5s) by a few people but are more often rated lower (1s and 2s). At the very bottom is Chi, who has been absent without explanation since January. Her absence perhaps affecting her score, but also there is perhaps more disappointment beasue of the fanfare and high expectations when she joined the club. The score for a couple of players may largely be due to lack of time to contributed: Izzy is an Academy player who has barely played (only two substitute appearances in the WSL and a Conti game), so hasn’t had much of a chance to impress yet. Vikki has also played in only a handful of games. The other four, Angela, Cho, Jiali and Ros, have had more game time (although typically less than those who are scoring higher). In Angela’s and, to a lesser extent, Jiali’s case game time has overwhelmingly come in the last few minutes of games, where they’ve come on as ‘Super-subs’. Cho and Ros have started more games but perhaps have not been as impactful as fans hoped. In scoring all of these players at least a third of fans gave 1s and 2s, and very few gave 4s and 5s. This suggests that a lot of fans are unconvinced that these players are contributing enough at present.

It’s notable that there are a lot of strikers/attacking midfielders among the group of players who are scored less highly and a lot of defenders / defensive midfielders in the upper part of the chart. Something that speaks clearly to where Spurs relative strengths have been this season and something that comes up again in Part 3 of the Results (up soon).

Games

Fans were asked which was your favourite game of the season and which was your worst. Here is what you said.

Fans’ favourite game (chosen by 44 percent) was the hugely unexpected away win at Manchester City, courtesy of the ‘hand of Ros’. There was quite a lot of love for the (4-0) home walloping of Brighton (chosen by 28 percent) and another 17 percent particularly enjoyed drawing our home NLD and, for the first time ever, getting some points off the Arse.

As for the low-point of the season, a clear majority (61 percent) chose the away loss to West Ham, which also resulted in an injury to Kit Graham, who had played a big part in our early season. The second most frequently chosen low-point (chosen by 17 percent) was the so-recent-it-still-hurts (0-3) loss in the away leg of the NLD. Other games selected were the painful (0-3) away loss to Manchester United which came during a period in January where we had a very depleted bench, and the more recent draw at Everton which was one we definitely should have won.

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That’s it for Part 1 of the results. Hope you enjoyed finding out what other fans think.

Let us know what you think in the comments (below) and check out Part 2 (player awards) and Part 3 (looking ahead).