Sigurdsson – Vital Reading player of the season!

For the past 3 weeks we have been asking you to vote for your Vital Reading player of the year and there were no surprises when it came to the winner. Gylfi Sigurdsson took the fans official player of the year award at the game on Sunday, and he has also won the Vital Reading award as well.


Sigurdsson began the season as a hot prospect, but no where near the first team -or so we thought. In fact here at Vital Reading we hadn’t even done a player profile of him by the time the season kicked off as we didn’t think he would have much of an impact.


Brendan Rodgers had other ideas though and he capped his first start in the Carling Cup against Burton with a stunning 30 yard strike.


He soon found himself in the team in the league for the first time against Sheffield United, and his wonderful free kick set up Matt Mills for the opening goal.


He soon had his first goal in the league against Peterborough in September, but was in and out of the side as Rodgers chopped and changed his starting 11 in the bid to find the perfect formula.


At the end of October he found himself out wide on the left but performances, if not results, started to pick up and he was at the forefront of it.


By December though Rodgers was sacked, but this was the making of Sigurdsson as he became the star man in Brian McDermott’s 4-2-3-1 formation.


With McDermott still in caretaker charge, he scored the coolest of penalties in the last minute at Anfield in the famous FA cup win and followed that up with the winners in the next two rounds against Burnley and West Brom.


He continued to score goal after goal, and March saw him score late penalties to win games against QPR and Leicester.


In the final game against Preston he scored with a neat finish to become the first Royals midfielder to score 20 goals in a season since Darren Caskey.


In the Vital Reading poll, Simon Church was the surprise 2nd place and Ryan Bertrand took 3rd.