Shane Long has followed up his Daily Echo player of the year award by winning the most prestigious of the lot, The Ugly Inside Player Of The Year.

Back in the early part of the season Shane Long looked like he might be on his way out of the Club in the January transfer window, despite a decent start he was finding himself overlooked in the starting line up for Sadio Mane & Graziano Pelle and having to settle for a place on the bench.

But Long took this initial setback in his stride and as in his performances on the pitch used every knockback to inspire him to greater exertions.

Now he has reaped the rewards and although both Pelle and Mane scoring on the final day meant that they pipped him to top goalscorer, he was a worthy second place only a goal behind the pair.

But he wasn't second place to either in the player of the year awards and now the poll conducted on the Ugly Inside has seen hm take 43% of the voting with Virgil Van Dijk runner up with 35% and Steven Davis third with 11%, no other player scoring little over 2%.

So why did Shane Long win the awards this season ? after all when he arrived there were those who said we had overpaid for a striker who rarely got into double figures in a season, at the time I pointed out that actually the £12 million we paid is about right for this level of scoring and that has proved right.

But the fact is that Long is about far more than goals, he is about work rate and harassing opponents into mistakes that keep attacks alive, in the past two seasons I have lost count of the number of times he has closed down a defender or a keeper and blocked the ball to either keep Saints on the attack or create openings.

Sometimes these go down as assists and at others it is part of the move that leads to a goal, but goes uncredited on the stats.

But slowly but surely Saints fans started to wake up to the contribution that Shane Long was making to the team and after the New Year so did Ronald Koeman as he started to pick the Irishman ahead of both Pelle and Mane at times and he became very much the first name on the Saints team sheet.

The good news is that although Saints don't have striker that got near 15 goals this season, they had 3 who could get into double figures and this is often more valuable than two 15 goal strikers as when one is out of form another can step up to the plate, add Charlei Austin and Jay Rodriguez when they are fit next season and we will have a potent attack force.

So congratulations to Shane Long, this is a small award in the grand scheme of things, but it is voted for by Saints fans and mirrored in other polls and that shows how much he has won some of his doubters around.

One word of advice though Shane ! After hearing you sing stick to the day job ! (Only joking)

Photo: Action Images

geezershoong added 17:39 - May 19 Deserved for his unceasing work rate alone.
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codge added 19:37 - May 19 Love this guy, any player that gives as much as he does deserves all the awards he gets. A true professional in every sense of the word, a great example to all the kids who want to play the gsme.
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perazi added 01:28 - May 20 Interesting that Ronald too has nominated SL as his most impressive player of the year in an interview with the Club website. He said that the level of improvement Long has made in his two years has been incredible.
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SaintBrock added 12:17 - May 20 Do you give him some sort of trophy Nick or is this all make believed? You made up the bit about Long being on his way out in January. There was never a hint of that to my knowledge.
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