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I'm seeing a lot of player of the season votes floating around Twitter and the like, but they hardly seem right in the circumstances. So I present... the Unplayer of the Season Award (that's definitely not a word). Who is least fit to wear the shirt? Who stunk the place out the most over the last 9 months? Finally an award with some real contenders.

I've picked a shortlist of 13 (seemed appropriate) with a couple of controversial inclusions, mostly to spur debate. Set a 10 app minimum so no Fryer or Trueman.

No Competition,  Kovar 100%,  we'd have survived had it not been for that clown.

I think that's where I am. Curran obviously isn't a footballer but replace him with an average L1 player and we probably don't win any more points. Replace Kovar with even a half decent keeper and we're well ahead of where we finish.

Not Just this season, the worst player in a Town shirt for many a season.

Kovar. Cost us crucial points, definitely.

Curran shouldn't have come in during important games near the end of the season though. papa John's only.

Kovar - 21 games  :eek: not even close to looking like a goalkeeper

I do feel a bit sorry for Kovar, he came in as a highly rated keeper, and on paper seemed a good signing, even Man Utd fans were saying how good he was.
But for the most part, he was absolutely useless, perhaps he was not quite ready for league football, or being asked to keep goal for a dogshit team in his first professional season proved too much?

Same for Curran, I have no ill feeling toward him personally, he's a young lad living the dream of a professional footballer.
But we all know the alleged reasons as to why he's getting game time, but he is nowhere near a professional footballer.
Quite possibly the most out-of-his-depth player i've ever seen in a Swindon shirt, and by god we've had some shite.

I don't like scapegoating, but they're both worthy of the award in fairness :)

Think I saw him make 1 save in that time

I must have missed that one !!!!

It was in the warm up

Baudry, end of discussion

Yeah, there are definitely some experienced pros getting off lightly here, I strongly considered Grounds.

I voted Grounds - if you analyse the goals conceded I suspect his errors contributed to more goals conceded than Kovar’s.
I have some sympathy for Kovar as he was playing behind a dreadful defence.

I voted Grounds. A wealth of Championship level experience, should have been more of a leader for the less experienced pros but always seemed to be in frame once the opposition had scored. I think he hid, which is worse than just being shit like Curran or Kovar.

Kovar cost us far more points than any of the others unfortunately.

Kovar. Quite what prompted Wellens, a lot of people's idea of a new saviour, to give him so many chances I will never fathom. Cost us at least the extra six points we needed to survive

Curran, a centre back that can’t get off the ground or head a ball is laughable. Lost every one of the 11 league games he participated in other than Rochdale at home where he came on as a 90th minute sub. That’s as dismal a record as you can get!

Kovar is an interesting one.
No doubt he wasn’t up to the task but he got no help from our defence. I wonder if Kovar would have looked any better with a competent defence in front of him? You also have to take into context that this was his first foray into professional football.

I mean Lee Camp did alright for us but even with him on goal and playing well I’m not sure our form was much better.

Baudry was shit when he played and was injured a lot. Definitely a waste of wage but probably too often injured to our worst player.

Grounds, who by all accounts had, had a solid career at Championship level was a complete liability.
Caddis wasn’t much better either.


Oooh, were all of those Wellens signings?

Fuck me, Grounds only has three votes. Jesus.

I'm  surprised at the turn around in this poll since I last looked. Kovar was way ahead when I last looked, but now Curran seems to have surged. I think that's because the alleged financing of his place doesn't sit well with any of us rather than the fact that he was the worst player. There is no doubt that he is Conference standard at best, but then none of the players listed covered themselves in glory.

Our defence has been awful all year. But Kovar and Fryer (who I assume didn't make the list because he didn't play enough) just weren't up to the job. Someone posted earlier that they can only remember seeing Kovar make one save. Put that into context with Curran. I saw him do some good things as well as not jump, get caught out of position, make rash tackles, shank the ball into the stands, panic in possession. Don't get me wrong, he deserves his place on this list and he also deserves to be up there, but, to my way of thinking, he doesn't top the 'unplayer' list.

P.S. Player of the year should go to Missilou's hair extensions - It turned him into a player for 45 minutes.

Whoever gets picked on in this poll, Sheridan must take some responsibility for their seemingly inability to perform. Likewise, those who did OK under the same circumstances must, by default, be better than that.

I presume most players need a structure, some organisational instructions, some tactical input from the manager to perform even adequately. All lacking from Sheridactyl.

Undoubtedly, some are just poor but none have escaped unscathed from the non-managerial reign of the Sheridactyl

I am more annoyed with players like Caddis Grant Pitman(first half) and a few others than the likes of Kovar and Curran. They are just shit and should not be anywhere near football, the others set a poor example with their fitness under wellens and set the tone for the season

Any winning Unplayer would have to acknowledge Sheridan's key contribution at any Awards ceremony.

For me, many on that list had injury concerns or weren't at the required level to start with.

The player who most impressed me and then, on seeing the low standards tolerated, took advantage and immediately turned to shit, was Dom Thompson.

Not picking on your post but surely a young keeper worth his sold should relish playing behind a dodgy defence?

My memory ain't what it used to be but didn't a young Tim Flowers turn up behind a dodgy STFC defence and perform wonders?

Not sure why Kovar would be any better with a decent defence.   At the start of the season every time someone got through one on one, or shot low, or at the near post they scored.   That wouldn't change with a decent defence, and would probably make them nervous and edgy and shitter than they otherwise would be.

He should have been an outfield player, wasted in goal.

Agree that senior pros need to take a look at themselves.   We didn't get relegated because of Curran.

Ah good. It's open season.
A team of hyperactive 5 year olds would have had a better collective attention span than this lot.

Voted for Kovar, the hologram.
Some of the better performances were in the first part of the season.
Having a competent keeper might have seen a few more points scraped together.
Will be interesting to see where the next foray out of the PL U23 cocoon takes him.

To make every squad, at least Curran showed a remarkable level of robust fitness when compared to some of his colleagues.

A mention in dispatches for Dom Thompson.
One decent performance in 25 was nowhere near good enough.
He just needs to take a much calmer approach.
Always seemed like a whirlwind of arms and legs just to control the ball.

We can only pick one  ;)

I'm tempted by a follow up "Underachiever of the season" or "Biggest gap between reputation and reality".

As it is, people are going for "just unmitigatedly useless" ahead of "should have been so much better"

Kovar for me, I blame him more than anyone for vital points being lost.

Whilst I don't think anyone would argue that Kovar was terrible, I just had to give it to Curran. My reasoning is, igoring the conjecture about him getting a contract because of the financial input from his father, his overall effort to me was completely negligible. For someone in his position, you want 100% effort, you want an all out blood and guts performance. I think he was so far away from that it just wasn't funny. He wouldn't compete for headers, he would jog back into position, ball watch as if there were a flock of seagulls trying to steal his sandwiches, and when he was culpable for goals would just shrug his shoulders as if he'd missed the tube at Canary Wharf Station, knowing another would be along in 1 minute. Zero professional pride.

Trouble is although a keeper may have not been good enough, they don't get the luxury of avoiding blame once goals are conceded.

I agree 100%.

Kovar by a country mile, worst keeper for Town in my 46 years of attending games.

Special mention to Curran though, well done you almost won something.

I voted Curran too. He isn't a professional footballer AND he shows zero professionalism or pride in his work. At least Kovar was trying (he was just fucking awful).

Yeah, I went more for attitude.

Oddly I think Kovar is probably going to be a better keeper than most of us think, just too inexperienced to play behind a shit defence and looked horribly out of his depth.

As for the worst, he’s close but I think lanzano might give him a run for his money, albeit we had the finances to ditch him fairly quickly

Jimmy glass was crap too.

Glass would have walked into this team at Christmas ahead of Fryer and Kovar TBH.

He was a more mobile striker than Pitman as well :)

Kovar looked like a young kid coached to within an inch of his life and exposed to tippy tappy football where he has never had to control an area.  It's like the scouts identified a tall footballer with good feet and decided he had the right build to be a keeper but he hadn't yet started to focus on the keepery stuff.

That said, he won't be as bad as he was for us ever again, he will develop.  He may not make it, but we saw his worst I think.

Curran is an affront to Professional Footballers.  I don't know what skills he has and what alternative career would suit him, but being a footballer is not the one a careers advisor should have guided him towards.  How the fuck he has been in two Academies of sorts before us is beyond me, but to have given him a 3 year contract must have sent the heckles up most of the squad.  I don't think I have ever watched us play before and seen other players having to point and direct another player so often.  There have been players who need an older head next to them, or someone to bring their confidence levels up, but at times you could see players like Grant having to tell him where to be, how to pass a ball and avoiding trying to get him too involved.

It would be shocking for him not to win this award.  Unlike Kovar, we got to see the best of what he will ever offer in the game, of that I am sure (just an opinion and people can hold me to it if I ever need to eat humble pie).

I think your humble pie is probably safe on the risk of Taylor Curran going on to greater things Rob.

This. You could see from players reactions when he came on and their reluctance to even pass him the ball everything you need to know. When Grant was playing centre back alongside him he was practically covering 2 positions as he didn’t have any faith in Curran. For someone in Curran’s position to then be completely half arsed in terms of effort is shameful.

Although overall awful, i do agree with this sentiment.

Cost us minimum 12 points....another six might of been enough.

I feel bad as he's only going, but Kovar directly cost us lot of points and saved us zero. Special mention to Grounds, Baudry, Conroy too. Far too slow and sloppy.

I think some people are underestimating just how negative an impact Curran had on the games he played.  I am sure he had a far worse record than Kovar even managed.

Obviously Curran is shite and I'm in no way defending him, but I do think any impact he had on our end results is marginal.

As much as he's "played" 14 games, three of his six starts were in the nobody cares Trophy. Of the other 11 games, four were sub appearances in the 77th minute or later and none of them the result changed between when he came on and full time.

The other seven were:

Gillingham (started, 2-0 loss)
Doncaster (27th minute sub, they were winning already and went on to win)
Plymouth (45th minute sub, they were already winning and went on to win)
Shrewsbury (41st minute sub, they were already winning and went on to win)
Peterborough (started, 3-0 loss)
Rochdale (started, 2-1 loss)
Ipswich (62nd minute sub, they were already winning and went on to win)

Obviously he's fucking dreadful, but he's hardly been on the pitch when it's mattered before the last month of the season when everyone had given up anyway.

OK, so Kovar can take home the Worst Impact by a Player on our Season award and Curran can take home the Worst Actual Player of our Season award.

I think that's fair... maybe the real competitive prize is "biggest underachiever relative to their previous career". Step forwards Grounds, Baudry, Caddis, Grant, Hunt and pretty much everyone else in the squad!

Thompson can take the Best Newcomer that turned to Shit within Two Games Award.

Agree.

Curran is more a reflection of the complete shit-show with the running of the club. A player like him should never get anywhere near the squad. You knew he was shit before he even kicked (or missed) a ball.

Kovar on the other hand come in with a lot of hype and turned out to be a complete flop.

I think with Curran its the nepotism thing that fucks people off. For that alone, TC gets my vote. Oh, and he was also shit.

Kovar for me - total disaster and we stuck with him for so long. JJW looks to be a much safer pair of hands.