#AgainstModernFootball - player of the month awards

There must be somewhere that manufactures specially-tailored mantelpieces for world class football players. For those who collect silverware on a seasonal basis, there is surely someone making a profit from the need to display such achievements. Lionel Messi, for instance, must have a mantelpiece the length of the Great Wall of China.

Rather bizarrely, for everything Messi has won over the course of his glittering career he only won La Liga’s Player of the Month award for the first time in February of this year. This is the fundamental flaw with such accolades, they don’t necessarily reward the best player in any given month. Do they even warrant a place on the mantelpiece or do they belong in that dusty box at the back of the cupboard where the hoover is kept?

Indeed, it’s time for a revised theory in how these awards are handed out every month and the Premier League have come up with one. Fans will this season be given a say on the voting panel, moving away from the traditional judging panel of former managers, coaches and players that have been used for the past two decades.

Both Player of the Month and Manager of the Month awards will be decided a combination of votes from supporters - conducted through Twitter and Facebook polls - and views from footballing figures. Captains of the Premier League’s 20 member teams will also have a vote, making the process of handing out the monthly awards more convoluted than any election.

This month’s public vote, published on the Premier League’s official twitter feed, has Jose Mourinho ahead of Antonio Conte, Pep Guardiola and Mike Phelan. But shouldn’t the Manchester United manager always be ahead in a public vote, given that the Old Trafford club boast more fans than any other club worldwide? How could Phelan ever possibly win ahead of Mourinho, with United notching well over eight million more Twitter followers than Hull City. It’s not really a fair fight.

Arsenal fans are also notoriously vociferous on social media. It’s little wonder a Gooner hasn’t yet won the X Factor, such is the determination of the club’s support to win every public vote going. Perhaps that’s how Jeremy Corbyn won the Labour leadership election. Maybe Arsenal supporters are this way as a consequence of their club’s title drought. They’ll take whatever silverware they can get their hands on. This could be a golden era of Player of the Month awards for them.

If the Premier League is so keen to harvest fan engagement maybe they should make its fixtures subject to a public vote as well. Is there any real point in going to the fuss of getting players and fans to travel to matches when they could be decided on social media? A title race between Arsenal and Man Utd would surely be the outcome season-upon-season. Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson could resume their personal duel through online avatars. It would be like a footballing Second Life.

Fantasy Football could become something akin to a footballing Pokemon Go, with gamers collecting games outside Premier League stadiums to assemble their teams. That would at least give those who turn up to welcome transfer deadline day signings a purpose besides sticking plastic sex toys into the ears of unsuspecting Sky Sports News reporters. Chelsea fans could have captured David Luiz on the King’s Road last week, with Peter Odemwingie still waiting outside Loftus Road.

In the current vein of things, it can’t be long before fans turn up at stadiums to watch Premier League fixtures wearing VR headsets. Players will be virtual versions of themselves, wired up unconscious in the dressing room like the scientists in Avatar. They’ll enter a deep sleep in order to perform skills and moves only previously seen before in Shaolin Soccer, or occasionally on a Zlatan Ibrahimovic highlight reel.

What is real and what is not is becoming a blurred threshold in football, but the Player of the Month award has never been a real accolade. It’s purely there to satisfy those who like to compare Football Manager stats, as if Premier League players are Top Trumps cards. A public vote will only underline that.