WHZ View: 5 consecutive PotM nominees – West Ham are pillars of PL consistency
It has been a stunning season so far at West Ham and this has been laid bare after Jesse Lingard was named on a very prestigious Premier League shortlist.
After a brilliant beginning to his Irons career, Lingard has been nominated for February’s Premier League Player of the Month and that has continued our success in this category during the current campaign.
We have now had five consecutive nominees for this award showing remarkable consistency across the board.
What’s better is they were all different players – Pablo Fornals (October), Angelo Ogbonna (November), Tomas Soucek (December), Craig Dawson (January) and now Lingard.
That is quite remarkable and there are key figures that do not even feature on that list – Declan Rice and Michail Antonio.
The latter has scored seven goals in 17 Premier League games despite an injury-hit campaign that saw him miss five games in December.
It’s a slight surprise not to see him there given his penchant for scoring crucial goals but even more shocking is the omission of Rice.
He has been indispensable as the Irons enforcer this season and has been key to our ascent to the European places that has us dreaming of glory.
Rice is clearly not getting his due credit but the positive is that a lot of our stars are beginning to get some recognition.
Lingard is fully derserving of his nomination and we are backing him to bring the award home to the London Stadium.
Our previous nominees didn’t come out on top but after directly contributing to five goals (three goals, two assists) in as many games our number 11 is the front-runner for this prestigious gong.
A Lingard win would be great for him but it would also act as just rewards for the great job the team as a whole has done and give tangible evidence of the progress taking place in East London.
In other West Ham news, see our exclusive interview with Frank McAvennie on David Moyes’ ‘masterstroke’ signing.