Grays_1890
Chris Jones
Na not having that, Hazard haha FFS hahaha
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Ossie Ardiles
- Thread starter Kingdawson
- Start date
Na not having that, Hazard haha FFS hahaha
K.D.D.D.D.Soc
Ian Walker
Hazard was a lovely player, was always overshadowed by Hoddle, in his first spell he scored as many goals as Ginola in less games and rarely got a long run in the team.
Mulletperm
Mauricio Taricco
Have a word
Grays_1890
Chris Jones
Not saying he wasn't, I am a fan of him, but Ginola was a special talent and as I say PFA player of the year in frankly an abomination of a side. Special player
Sent from my SM-A127F using Fapatalk
parklane1
Tony Galvin
My thoughts as well, he was very good player in a sea of poor players and stood out because of it. And his legend staus by some fans is not really deserved. imo
FatBloke
Niko Kranjcar
Various factors, including the timing of the vote being before ManU won their treble and the vote being split between various ManU players allowing Ginola to nip in there -- much in the way that he sashayed past opposition left backs!
Actually, The Athletic has an interesting piece on it:
https://theathletic.com/1771256/202...of-the-year-tottenham-manchester-united-1999/
Rebooted: How Ginola won Player of the Year in 1999 to leave Fergie ‘insulted’
By Charlie Eccleshare and Oliver Kay
Apr 27, 2020
________________________________________
Eight years had passed. It was the morning of May 8, 2007, one of those very rare occasions when journalists pitching up at Manchester United’s training ground were invited to join Sir Alex Ferguson in raising our glasses — well, plastic cups — of bubbly.
United had been crowned champions of England for the first time in four seasons and Ferguson was in a blissful state, joking with reporters who had dared to question his future midway through the arduous previous campaign. He looked happier and more relaxed than at any time since the glorious aftermath of the 1998-99 season, when, in unforgettable circumstances, they won an unprecedented treble of Premier League, FA Cup and European Cup.
A Portuguese reporter had come to ask him about Cristiano Ronaldo’s stellar contribution to the campaign. “Well, he’s won all the awards,” the United manager began, settling back into his seat. “And it just goes to show that even the journalists in England can get it right every now and again.”
Oh, here we go… “Did you know that in 1999 they picked David Ginola for the football writers’ award? We won the treble that year. In fact, the only thing we didn’t win was the Boat Race. And they still gave it to Ginola! Can you believe that?!”
It was something he brought up again and again in the years after United’s treble success. He always seemed to hold it against the Football Writers’ Association, who voted Ginola their Footballer of the Year. Less so the players, who reached the same result in the Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) Player of the Year ballot almost exactly 21 years ago to the day.
Ferguson felt aggrieved that in a season when United scaled such spectacular heights, his players were overlooked for those two awards. To mention just five of them, Jaap Stam, Roy Keane, David Beckham, Andy Cole and Dwight Yorke were all in the form of their lives — as they had to be in order to see off Arsenal’s challenge in the Premier League and FA Cup while also beating Inter Milan, Juventus and, most dramatically of all, Bayern Munich in the Champions League.
And yet the individual accolades went to Ginola, whose contribution to Tottenham Hotspur’s League Cup win, on course to a forgettable bottom-half finish in the Premier League, had been eclipsed by the time the season reached its now-legendary climax in the Nou Camp.
But even with those mitigating factors, it still needed something special from someone not at Manchester United to scoop the awards.
Ginola provided exactly that.
David Ginola’s march towards his player of year double actually began before the season had started — at the 1998 World Cup.
Hosts France won the tournament, but the brilliant Ginola was not part of it — having been omitted from the national team since 1995. His reputation never fully recovered after being made spacegoat by then-manager Gerard Houllier for the team’s capitulation against Bulgaria in the final qualifier that cost them a place at the 1994 World Cup. Houllier said at the time Ginola had committed a “crime” by misdirecting a cross that resulted in Bulgaria’s last-minute winner.
So while his nation celebrated, Ginola brooded. “It was fantastic for the French people, but on the other hand, from a personal point of view, it was terrible,” he said in 2000. Ginola was such a forgotten man in his home country that on a visit back at around this time he was asked by a reporter: “So what are you up to now you’ve retired from football?”
By the time the 1998-99 season started, he had a point to prove. “He wanted to show everyone: ‘Listen, you missed one of the best players in the world playing for France,’” former Spurs centre-back Ramon Vega, his room-mate that season, remembers. “Luckily enough he reacted like that, because not all players would have done after that kind of setback.”
It took a little while for Ginola to get going, though. His first goal did not arrive until the December, by which time he had already picked up seven yellow cards. (Curiously, he ended up receiving more bookings — 10 — than he scored goals that season — seven).
“He had not been accepted in France and in the first couple of months that had an effect,” says Vega.
The uncertainty at Spurs at the start of the season didn’t help. Lame-duck manager Christian Gross staggered on until early September before being sacked, and there was then a month’s wait before George Graham took over.
Graham’s arrival was considered bad news for Ginola: a defensive disciplinarian was surely the last thing this maverick midfielder needed. Especially one who had posed topless upon signing for Spurs and to his critics was more concerned with filming commercials about his hair for L’Oreal.
Like missing out on the World Cup, this kind of criticism fuelled him. “All the journalists called me a luxury, so I had to make a point again. When George Graham became manager, it was: ‘Ginola is finito’, but I became the PFA Player of the Year. It’s always like this,” Ginola told The Athletic earlier this year.
“In 1993, I was the ‘big criminal’ in France and I was whistled and booed wherever I played. I’d be crying on the pitch. I could have ended my career, but instead I scored, won titles and was named Player of the Year. I always bounce back. People try to kill you, but instead of killing you, they make you stronger.”
Rather than marginalising Ginola — at this point anyway — Graham set about building the team around him. “It soon became evident to George that he had to give Ginola a little bit more license,” remembers Chris Hughton, who was Graham’s assistant and then first-team coach that season. “So the balance of the team was whoever was playing on that right-hand side would have had a different type of role — they would have had to compensate for Ginola a little bit. Because there’s no doubt that Ginola was better going forward then he was going back.
“It became apparent with George that with all the talent he had, you had to give him a bit of license. Having said that, there were still shouts at David to get back into shape. It wasn’t one where George gave him complete license. What George allowed him to do or wanted him to do was a nice balance of being a team player but also knowing that he could go out and express himself.”
Things started to click for Ginola around December. First, he scored a brilliant goal against Manchester United in the League Cup quarter-finals, where after taking up a more central position he then curled a long-range strike into the top corner with his left foot.
Having the license to roam into those sort of positions was key to how successful Ginola was that season. “At Saudi Sportswashing Machine he was absolutely fantastic but his role mainly was to cross the ball, which he did exceptionally well,” says Les Ferdinand, who like Ginola joined Spurs from Saudi Sportswashing Machine in the summer of 1997.
“When we were at Saudi Sportswashing Machine, he was told, ‘Your job is to cross the ball into the middle for Les.’ And that’s exactly what he did. At Tottenham, he had more of a free role not only to cross the ball but also to take shots. He’d come in off the wing and play in those little pockets that everyone talks about now.
“He was given that role because Spurs have normally had that kind of maverick in their squads. He thrived on it, and went up another notch from where he was at Saudi Sportswashing Machine. He’s one of the best players I’ve played with in my career.”
FatBloke
Niko Kranjcar
Ten days after scoring against United in that Cup tie, Ginola tormented that season’s treble winners again in the league. Gary Neville was so discombobulated he was shown a second yellow card in the 39th minute for pulling back Ginola, after Nicky Butt had already been booked for scything down the Frenchman. Foreshadowing his PFA award win, opposition players were acutely aware of his quality and had realised the only way to stop Ginola was to foul him.
Spurs, meanwhile, knew that if they could get the ball to Ginola they always had a chance — in that United game they recovered from 2-0 down to draw 2-2.
“He was fantastic because as a defender you could give him the ball and you wouldn’t have to run back — you knew something would happen going forward,” says Vega.
With Spurs too inconsistent to achieve much of note in the league that season, it was in the cups where the team — and Ginola — came alive. They won the League Cup, and reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup, thanks in large part to Ginola.
In a FA Cup fifth-round replay against Leeds United, Ginola followed up Darren Anderton’s stunning long-range goal with a 25-yard volley, which set up a quarter-final tie at Barnsley. It was there that Ginola scored surely the greatest goal of his career and one that in no small part helped to secure his double at that year’s individual honours.
Picking the ball up by the left touchline, Ginola weaved past four defenders and finished coolly; a goal so mesmerising, it evoked memories of Ricky Villa’s FA Cup-winning goal in 1981. It looked a certainty to win that year’s goal of the season competition until Ryan Giggs did something similar for Manchester United against Arsenal a month later.
“Football is about instinct,” Ginola later said of the goal. “When you think too much, things tend not to work! It’s best to let your imagination and your creation do the business most of the time.”
For Hughton, that goal underlined what made Ginola so unique. “Being on the touchline and seeing the quality he had was amazing. I remember very clearly being almost open-mouthed as he’s running with the ball, one bit further, one bit further, and we were right behind it on that side so we saw it from start to finish.
“With his physique, he had remarkable skill and speed at the same time.”
When asked what made Ginola so special, Hughton answers “balance” without hesitating. “At around that time especially you had a lot of wingers like Franz Carr who weren’t the biggest, but Ginola was 6ft 1in and quite solid, as he showed with that shirt-off celebration for Aston Villa a year later. He was a big man. To have that type of balance with his size was unusual, and that was probably his biggest asset. When he was running at full pelt he could still go either way.
“Remember, this was a right-footed player playing on the left, because it gave him other options. As he showed that night at Barnsley.”
Ginola was becoming, if he wasn’t already, a superstar. “David was the most flamboyant of all of us,” Vega says. “He had the L’Oreal contract and when we went out at that time, he was always the centre of attention.”
What was he like to room with? Vega lets out a long laugh and says fondly: “There was lots of laughter. He was very, very special.
“We used to talk about everything. There was no PlayStation or even the iPhone. In those days we had quite intense conversations — everything that was happening around the world, philosophy, quite deep conversations. It was interesting.
“He was funny, he always left his stuff lying around the room. He always had a little smoke — I’d have to open the window all the time.”
When it was time to be serious though, Ginola would switch on, and he always resented the suggestion that he was some kind of dilettante. He was a flair player, certainly, but his flamboyant skills and good looks could give a misleading impression.
“He was a bon viveur,” Vega says. “He enjoyed life to the max but he took what he was doing on the pitch very seriously.
“He had this combination of being an extremely skilful, creative player but also taking things seriously on the pitch. It was a great combination — most people only have one but don’t have the other.
“He trained… I wouldn’t call it hard, but in a professional way. He had his own philosophy on life. He took every day as it came but enjoyed every minute as well. Football was his passion and you could feel that. In matches or on the training ground, that’s when he would come alive.”
Ginola it seems had picking his moments down to a fine art. “You could give the ball to Ginola, and he could run 10 times at you but if he had to run back once, he would be knackered!” Tottenham team-mate Sol Campbell said on Sky Sports in 2017. “But give him the ball going forward and he could do it all day long.”
Self-belief, naturally, was never an issue.
“He was a very confident individual,” Hughton recalls. “Something about all very good players is that they know they’re very good players — and he knew he was very good. But he was very likeable — especially as a coach, really good to talk to.”
After his worldie at Barnsley, Ginola also scored eye-catching goals against Charlton Athletic, West Ham United and Chelsea as Spurs limped to an 11th place finish, closer in points terms to the relegation places than the top four.
It shows how much football has changed that a winger could win the two awards with a season-tally of just three Premier League goals, the first of which didn’t arrive until April 20. In today’s metrics-obsessed world, surely no attacking player with that kind of output would stand a chance. Ginola though was about more than just goals and assists — he had so much style and presence that his fellow players and journalists couldn’t ignore him.
It’s also impossible to imagine a player from a mid-table side winning those awards now. This partly reflects how much less of a gap there was from top to bottom in this period. United won the title that season with 79 points for instance, which is three less than Liverpool already have this campaign with nine matches left to play.
Spurs, meanwhile, knew that if they could get the ball to Ginola they always had a chance — in that United game they recovered from 2-0 down to draw 2-2.
“He was fantastic because as a defender you could give him the ball and you wouldn’t have to run back — you knew something would happen going forward,” says Vega.
With Spurs too inconsistent to achieve much of note in the league that season, it was in the cups where the team — and Ginola — came alive. They won the League Cup, and reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup, thanks in large part to Ginola.
In a FA Cup fifth-round replay against Leeds United, Ginola followed up Darren Anderton’s stunning long-range goal with a 25-yard volley, which set up a quarter-final tie at Barnsley. It was there that Ginola scored surely the greatest goal of his career and one that in no small part helped to secure his double at that year’s individual honours.
Picking the ball up by the left touchline, Ginola weaved past four defenders and finished coolly; a goal so mesmerising, it evoked memories of Ricky Villa’s FA Cup-winning goal in 1981. It looked a certainty to win that year’s goal of the season competition until Ryan Giggs did something similar for Manchester United against Arsenal a month later.
“Football is about instinct,” Ginola later said of the goal. “When you think too much, things tend not to work! It’s best to let your imagination and your creation do the business most of the time.”
For Hughton, that goal underlined what made Ginola so unique. “Being on the touchline and seeing the quality he had was amazing. I remember very clearly being almost open-mouthed as he’s running with the ball, one bit further, one bit further, and we were right behind it on that side so we saw it from start to finish.
“With his physique, he had remarkable skill and speed at the same time.”
When asked what made Ginola so special, Hughton answers “balance” without hesitating. “At around that time especially you had a lot of wingers like Franz Carr who weren’t the biggest, but Ginola was 6ft 1in and quite solid, as he showed with that shirt-off celebration for Aston Villa a year later. He was a big man. To have that type of balance with his size was unusual, and that was probably his biggest asset. When he was running at full pelt he could still go either way.
“Remember, this was a right-footed player playing on the left, because it gave him other options. As he showed that night at Barnsley.”
Ginola was becoming, if he wasn’t already, a superstar. “David was the most flamboyant of all of us,” Vega says. “He had the L’Oreal contract and when we went out at that time, he was always the centre of attention.”
What was he like to room with? Vega lets out a long laugh and says fondly: “There was lots of laughter. He was very, very special.
“We used to talk about everything. There was no PlayStation or even the iPhone. In those days we had quite intense conversations — everything that was happening around the world, philosophy, quite deep conversations. It was interesting.
“He was funny, he always left his stuff lying around the room. He always had a little smoke — I’d have to open the window all the time.”
When it was time to be serious though, Ginola would switch on, and he always resented the suggestion that he was some kind of dilettante. He was a flair player, certainly, but his flamboyant skills and good looks could give a misleading impression.
“He was a bon viveur,” Vega says. “He enjoyed life to the max but he took what he was doing on the pitch very seriously.
“He had this combination of being an extremely skilful, creative player but also taking things seriously on the pitch. It was a great combination — most people only have one but don’t have the other.
“He trained… I wouldn’t call it hard, but in a professional way. He had his own philosophy on life. He took every day as it came but enjoyed every minute as well. Football was his passion and you could feel that. In matches or on the training ground, that’s when he would come alive.”
Ginola it seems had picking his moments down to a fine art. “You could give the ball to Ginola, and he could run 10 times at you but if he had to run back once, he would be knackered!” Tottenham team-mate Sol Campbell said on Sky Sports in 2017. “But give him the ball going forward and he could do it all day long.”
Self-belief, naturally, was never an issue.
“He was a very confident individual,” Hughton recalls. “Something about all very good players is that they know they’re very good players — and he knew he was very good. But he was very likeable — especially as a coach, really good to talk to.”
After his worldie at Barnsley, Ginola also scored eye-catching goals against Charlton Athletic, West Ham United and Chelsea as Spurs limped to an 11th place finish, closer in points terms to the relegation places than the top four.
It shows how much football has changed that a winger could win the two awards with a season-tally of just three Premier League goals, the first of which didn’t arrive until April 20. In today’s metrics-obsessed world, surely no attacking player with that kind of output would stand a chance. Ginola though was about more than just goals and assists — he had so much style and presence that his fellow players and journalists couldn’t ignore him.
It’s also impossible to imagine a player from a mid-table side winning those awards now. This partly reflects how much less of a gap there was from top to bottom in this period. United won the title that season with 79 points for instance, which is three less than Liverpool already have this campaign with nine matches left to play.
FatBloke
Niko Kranjcar
Though in truth what Ginola did is difficult to imagine in any era when you consider that the next lowest finishing place of a PFA Player of the Year winner’s team during the Premier League era is fifth.
So besides his outstanding performances, how did he do it? At risk of stating the obvious, the PFA and FWA accolades are individual awards. Different players and journalists vote with different criteria in mind. but it is about finding the best individual, rather than necessarily the best player in the best team. In the Premier League’s 27 completed seasons, the PFA and FWA award winner has come from the title-winning club on 13 occasions.
One issue is timing. To hold an awards ceremony before players disappear on post-season holidays, the matter usually has to be resolved before the end of April. Last season’s PFA voting deadline was April 2, at which point every Premier League still had at least six matches to play and the Champions League was only approaching the quarter-final stage. The FWA ballot is done electronically, but the players’ vote is still submitted by ballot papers.
Nobody at the FWA can offer a detailed breakdown of its 1999 ballot or others from that time; many vital documents were sadly lost in a house fire several years ago. But it is reasonable to suggest that Ginola’s goal at Barnsley on March 16 would have been fresh in the minds of FWA and PFA members when their votes were cast. United’s season-defining heroics, at Villa Park, in Turin and at the Nou Camp, had yet to take place.
There’s Ginola’s knack for picking his moments again.
And it’s worth remembering that, according to Ferdinand, the timing of the vote means players also factor in what happened at the back-end of the previous season. “It includes the end of the last season and the early part of the current season, and in both cases David was exceptional,” he says. “At the end of 1997-98, he played extremely well to help us avoid relegation.”
As for the reporters, former Daily Telegraph football writer Christopher Davies, who was chairman of the FWA at the time of the 1999 vote, recalls it was always Ferguson’s opening gambit with him. Davies would point out that it was a democratic vote, taken before the climactic final weeks of the campaign, when it was still quite possible that United could have finished empty-handed. “YOU were chairman,” Ferguson would tell him, with just a trace of a smile. “YOU were culpable.”
The FWA ballot is quite straightforward: one member, one vote. “And there’s never any prospect of football writers getting together and pooling their votes,” Davies says. “We’re far too opinionated and strong-willed for that.
“That year was an unusual year. Normally you might have votes spread between two or three players from one team. That year I think there must have been seven or eight Manchester United players who got votes. There were votes for Peter Schmeichel, Roy Keane, Jaap Stam, Paul Scholes, David Beckham, Dwight Yorke, Andy Cole and so on. So the vote was split seven or eight ways, and David Ginola won it.”
There was a similar split in 2011, when Scott Parker, who was unable to save West Ham United from relegation, won the FWA vote. United won the Premier League that season too, but Ferguson was less concerned. “I remember when we won the treble in 1999, David Ginola got it,” he said. “I have nothing against Ginola at all, but I thought it was an insult to Manchester United. But with Parker, it’s nice to recognise somebody outside of the celebrity clubs in the Premier League.”
At Tottenham, there was pride in Ginola winning the awards, and no great surprise given how outstanding he had been. “He deserved it,” says Hughton. “No doubt that if he’d been playing for one of the teams doing better than us that season, it wouldn’t have been questioned.”
For Ginola, winning the two awards was a form of redemption. Those close to him say his big regret, from his time in England, was that he didn’t win the title. Missing out with Saudi Sportswashing Machine in 1995-96, having been nine points clear with a game in hand in late February, still rankles. He won that League Cup with Tottenham in 1999, but the individual awards meant just as much to him. The PFA award, in particular, felt like the kind of approval and vindication he had been chasing since the France debacle six years earlier.
His name might appear incongruous on the list now, but, as he told Sky Sports in a 2013 interview: “There wasn’t any controversy when I won. When they announced my name, my fellow players gave me a standing ovation and said, ‘David, you deserve it because this year you have been amazing.’”
Oh to have seen Ferguson’s reaction to that.
So besides his outstanding performances, how did he do it? At risk of stating the obvious, the PFA and FWA accolades are individual awards. Different players and journalists vote with different criteria in mind. but it is about finding the best individual, rather than necessarily the best player in the best team. In the Premier League’s 27 completed seasons, the PFA and FWA award winner has come from the title-winning club on 13 occasions.
One issue is timing. To hold an awards ceremony before players disappear on post-season holidays, the matter usually has to be resolved before the end of April. Last season’s PFA voting deadline was April 2, at which point every Premier League still had at least six matches to play and the Champions League was only approaching the quarter-final stage. The FWA ballot is done electronically, but the players’ vote is still submitted by ballot papers.
Nobody at the FWA can offer a detailed breakdown of its 1999 ballot or others from that time; many vital documents were sadly lost in a house fire several years ago. But it is reasonable to suggest that Ginola’s goal at Barnsley on March 16 would have been fresh in the minds of FWA and PFA members when their votes were cast. United’s season-defining heroics, at Villa Park, in Turin and at the Nou Camp, had yet to take place.
There’s Ginola’s knack for picking his moments again.
And it’s worth remembering that, according to Ferdinand, the timing of the vote means players also factor in what happened at the back-end of the previous season. “It includes the end of the last season and the early part of the current season, and in both cases David was exceptional,” he says. “At the end of 1997-98, he played extremely well to help us avoid relegation.”
As for the reporters, former Daily Telegraph football writer Christopher Davies, who was chairman of the FWA at the time of the 1999 vote, recalls it was always Ferguson’s opening gambit with him. Davies would point out that it was a democratic vote, taken before the climactic final weeks of the campaign, when it was still quite possible that United could have finished empty-handed. “YOU were chairman,” Ferguson would tell him, with just a trace of a smile. “YOU were culpable.”
The FWA ballot is quite straightforward: one member, one vote. “And there’s never any prospect of football writers getting together and pooling their votes,” Davies says. “We’re far too opinionated and strong-willed for that.
“That year was an unusual year. Normally you might have votes spread between two or three players from one team. That year I think there must have been seven or eight Manchester United players who got votes. There were votes for Peter Schmeichel, Roy Keane, Jaap Stam, Paul Scholes, David Beckham, Dwight Yorke, Andy Cole and so on. So the vote was split seven or eight ways, and David Ginola won it.”
There was a similar split in 2011, when Scott Parker, who was unable to save West Ham United from relegation, won the FWA vote. United won the Premier League that season too, but Ferguson was less concerned. “I remember when we won the treble in 1999, David Ginola got it,” he said. “I have nothing against Ginola at all, but I thought it was an insult to Manchester United. But with Parker, it’s nice to recognise somebody outside of the celebrity clubs in the Premier League.”
At Tottenham, there was pride in Ginola winning the awards, and no great surprise given how outstanding he had been. “He deserved it,” says Hughton. “No doubt that if he’d been playing for one of the teams doing better than us that season, it wouldn’t have been questioned.”
For Ginola, winning the two awards was a form of redemption. Those close to him say his big regret, from his time in England, was that he didn’t win the title. Missing out with Saudi Sportswashing Machine in 1995-96, having been nine points clear with a game in hand in late February, still rankles. He won that League Cup with Tottenham in 1999, but the individual awards meant just as much to him. The PFA award, in particular, felt like the kind of approval and vindication he had been chasing since the France debacle six years earlier.
His name might appear incongruous on the list now, but, as he told Sky Sports in a 2013 interview: “There wasn’t any controversy when I won. When they announced my name, my fellow players gave me a standing ovation and said, ‘David, you deserve it because this year you have been amazing.’”
Oh to have seen Ferguson’s reaction to that.
Gazza Dazzla
Chris Perry
I only really skim read that, but did it provide any logic to the argument that “the Utd votes were split which is why Ginola got it?”
I mean, how does that even work? Players and football writers couldn’t decide who of Scholes, Keane, Stam, Schmeichal, etc etc to give it to so instead of just picking one of them they decided to go Ginola instead?!?! What sort of logic is that? Hmm I don’t know which cut of steak I want, rib eye, filet, sirloin, etc. I know, I’ll just have the vegetable lasagne!?!
Surely if they were the stand out players that season then they’d have got the votes like 20% each between them and Ginola would have barely got any % of the vote.
soo many people have trotted this line out that I’m sure there must be some logic behind it, but I’m yet to hear a coherent argument on it.
I mean, how does that even work? Players and football writers couldn’t decide who of Scholes, Keane, Stam, Schmeichal, etc etc to give it to so instead of just picking one of them they decided to go Ginola instead?!?! What sort of logic is that? Hmm I don’t know which cut of steak I want, rib eye, filet, sirloin, etc. I know, I’ll just have the vegetable lasagne!?!
Surely if they were the stand out players that season then they’d have got the votes like 20% each between them and Ginola would have barely got any % of the vote.
soo many people have trotted this line out that I’m sure there must be some logic behind it, but I’m yet to hear a coherent argument on it.
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Bullet
Andy Thompson
I presume the logic would be "well Man Utd won everything, so we should vote for one of their players, but I'm not sure which one to go for since 5 of them did so well... so I'll just pick one of the 5" whereas if Beckham or someone had really stood out more than Keane et al then he would have got those votes.
Not sure it fully fully makes sense, but it does a bit.
K.D.D.D.D.Soc
Ian Walker
Chris Davies was a first class arsehole and a raving gooner.
Grays_1890
Chris Jones
Also flies in the face of the Sky Doc where the players who voted for him speak about why they voted for him and say he was incredible that year.
Regardless, if your splitting the vote with treble winners you are still a top talent regardless.
Ginola was special
Sent from my SM-A127F using Fapatalk
FatBloke
Niko Kranjcar
It's not that people would vote for Ginola instead of a ManU player, but that the ManU players would each get a lower share of the vote.
Say it was just Scholes and Stam who were head and shoulders above the other ManU players. The voting might go 35% Scholes, 30% Stam, 20% Ginola, and 15% other. So Scholes gets it.
Now add in Keane, Giggs and Schmeichel. The voters who were going to vote for a ManU player anyway go for them, along with some of the others. However, the Ginola voters still vote for Ginola. So now it's 18% Scholes, 15% Stam, 14% Giggs, 13% Schmeichel, 10% Keane, 20% Ginola, and 10% other. So Ginola gets it.
That's the theory, anyway. I should point out that I'm in no way trying to do Ginola down. He was the sort of player who made things happen -- and even if he didn't, you'd still be off your seat. So exciting. Definitely more finest roast boeuf than veggie lasagne ;-)
Grays_1890
Chris Jones
Regardless, to win that award in the 1990s for Spurs, being the first player to win the award outside the top 4 and be in that association with those players speaks volumes.
He was a class act
Bullet
Andy Thompson
That's what I just said