Vote for your YEP Leeds United Player of the Year

(To cast your YEP vote, email your choice from the Leeds United squad to [email protected] by midday on Wednesday, April 25.)

The prospect of the prize going to Nye divided opinion between those who saw his nomination as a nice gesture and those who saw it as an inappropriate stunt but this is not a year where players are climbing over each other to claim the trophy. There is no candidate with the clout of Chris Wood, who won it last season on the strength of 30 goals and the best form of his career.

Wood collected both the club’s and the Yorkshire Evening Post’s player-of-the-year awards and voting for the YEP’s 2017-18 prize opens today. Leeds have fallen a long way short of their stated aim of a top six finish but certain players have emerged from a hard campaign with credit despite the frustration of a chronic loss of form since Christmas.

Pablo Hernandez, United’s Spanish midfielder, is a leading contender after a campaign in which the squad at Elland Road have leant heavily on his experience. Hernandez turned 33 last week and is by some distance Leeds’ oldest outfield player. His nine goals and eight assists were not enough to keep the club in contention for promotion but the touches of magic seen in the second half of this season have come more often than not from him. They led Paul Heckingbottom to instigate contract talks with a veteran whose deal expires this summer.

Heckingbottom has seen Hernandez as the star of the show during his short spell as head coach. “Pablo’s been a really positive light for us in the games we’ve had him fit and available for,” Heckingbottom said. “He’s been one of the best performers for me.”

The weight of pressure on Hernandez’s shoulders owed much to the six-match suspension imposed on Samuel Saiz in January, a ban which stunted Saiz’s impact. The 26-year-old was a revelation in the early months of the term, a slick but aggressive playmaker who scored a hat-trick on his debut in the League Cup and struck nine times before the end of November.

His goals have dried up since then and he has not recovered from his dismissal for spitting in an FA Cup defeat to Newport County but he was influential in United’s better spells of form.Saiz, for a long time, was Leeds’ top scorer before being overtaken by Kemar Roofe on 13 and Pierre-Michel Lasogga on 10. Lasogga’s strikes came in bunches - five in his first 10 appearances and another five in six games in January and February - while Roofe’s finishing included hat-tricks in a League Cup win over Port Vale and a Championship victory away at Queens Park Rangers.

Roofe - a former League Two player of the year - scored only three times in his first season at Leeds after a £3m move from Oxford United in 2016 but his finishing touch has been more apparent in the past 12 months.

“The season’s been disappointing because we haven’t made the play-offs or been promoted but I’ve scored more goals,” he said last week.

“I do set myself targets but I keep them to myself.”

Gjanni Alioski, in his first year in England, has had a hand in 11 goals in the Championship while defensively, Pontus Jansson stuck out as the best of Leeds’ centre-backs without replicating last season’s dominance.

Young goalkeeper Bailey Peacock-Farrell, meanwhile, has caught the eye since being thrown into Heckingbottom’s starting line-up a month ago, claiming man-of-the-match awards and prompting Leeds to consider whether he should start next season as their first choice.

Peacock-Farrell is emerging as a shining light in a year of precious few at Elland Road but Leeds as a squad have had their moments: a run to the top of the Championship in the second month of the season and sustained period in the top six prior to the turn of the year. The promise faded eventually but in a mid-table cast there are some for whom recognition as player of the year would still be deserved.

The YEP’s player-of-the-year award is sponsored by long-time partner Jackson Trophies.

To cast your vote, email your choice to [email protected] by midday on Wednesday, April 25.

Alternatively, you can send your selection on a postcard to Leeds United Player of the Year 2017-18, SportsDesk, Yorkshire Evening Post, No 1 Leeds, 26 Whitehall Road, Leeds, LS12 1BE. One vote per person will be accepted.

For a full and comprehensive range of corporate and sporting trophies, visit Jackson Trophies at 17 Chapel Street, Halton, Leeds or online at www.jacksontrophies.com