Dr Fishy's Player Of The Year - Week 6

By: Dr Fishy
Date: 09/06/2002

THIS WEEK I will complete the bottom half of the Dr Fishy Player of the Year top 20 table. So far Burnett, Willems, Jeffrey, Jevons, Coldicott, Butterfield, Campbell and Gallimore have featured and next we have two more in 12th and 11th position.

In 12th place we have the former captain and current player/manager Paul Groves. Despite being Mr Dependable in past seasons, his form over the last 12 months has been up and down with a few twists and turns in the tale along the way.

The midfield days are long gone now for the 36-year old as he played all of last season in defence. Overall he achieved an average grade of C+ after being marked 39 times by myself and accumulating 307 points in the process resulting in 7.8 out of ten.

Groves got a C+ grade 23% of the time and his best grade was an A. That came at several points along the season, most noticeably at Liverpool and at Coventry early on in the season.

His worst grade was D- and that could have come anywhere in between the time of October and February. Despite fluctuating between high and low marks, Grovesie's best run came over 11 games.

His worst run was over five games (occurring three times) showing that it never took more than five games for him to get a grade B. In total Groves received three As, 10 Bs, 20 Cs and three Ds.

To sum up the season then, Groves played well in patches but also played poorly (perhaps his age is catching up with him). It didn't take long before he had a good game and his form improved towards the end of the season when the team were playing well under his own management.

And now in 11th place is a player who played quite a large part of the season (for once) for the Mariners. Young Ben Chapman appears just in the bottom half of the table after being graded 15 times by me.

In past seasons the left-back has had very few chances to impress but was given a reprieve by former manager Lennie Lawrence just in time for the Liverpool game. One minute he's heading to Scarborough, the next he's playing at Anfield!

It's an amazing story, which gains the overall grade of C+, but he was so close to achieving a B-. 124 points from 15 games equalled 8.3 out of ten but had to be rounded up to 8, which gave him the eventual C+.

He achieved C+ 20% of the time with his best grade being a B. His worst grade was just a C-, one of the highest in the team in this category. The B came against Portsmouth in the 3-1 win, and the C- came a couple of times, again, probably within the dark winter months.

His best run stretched over the full 15 games (so in short he never got a D, which we know because his lowest mark was C-) and his worst run was just three games (that's three games without a B). It's an excellent record that shows why he deserves a new contract.

In total he amassed no As but eight Bs and seven Cs, with no Ds, Es, or Fs. Next week we move into the top half of the table where we will see the entrance of two more defenders, one young and one old.

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