Huge congratulations are in order for Tom Ince, who you’ve named your TTE player of the season for 2022/23! It’s two out of three for Ince now, seeing as he won the club’s POTS award (as voted for by fans) but lost out on the players’ player award to Joe Lumley.

In the end, he was a comfortable winner from our four-man shortlist, which also consisted of Andy Carroll, Tom Holmes and Lumley. Ince finished with a score of 409 points, way ahead of Lumley in second on 348, while Carroll (268) edged out Holmes (255) to gain third spot. Under our ranked scoring system, a first-place vote earned a player four points, a second-place vote earned them three, and so on.

Here’s how the raw vote tallies look...

...and here’s what it looks like with the votes weighted.

It’s a deserved win for Ince, who’s been my personal pick for pretty much all of the campaign. He started 2022/23 off excellently, turning in some big performances as Reading raced into the play-off positions, and would remain our key player for most of the remainder of the season.

His importance to Reading in 2022/23 is made clear by a mixture of objective stats about his contribution and some subjective ones too. He came out joint-top in the scoring charts, level with Carroll on nine goals, and above anyone else on the assists front by contributing five.

Ince was also a standout with some in-house TTE stats. His average from our player ratings comes out to 6.1/10, higher than anyone else in the squad, while he also grabbed more player of the month (four) and man of the match (seven) awards than anyone else.

Ince had more than fair share of great individual moments. His first goal of the season was a peach, hitting a winner from range at home to Cardiff City, and he followed that up with an exquisite free-kick at Wigan Athletic just before the first international break.

I’d put his absolute high point as the Blackpool game at home though. In that game, Ince scored twice (both from open play - a rarity for anyone in 2022/23) and played in Yakou Meite to win the penalty that would be converted by Carroll. I wrote more about the tactical significance of that game here.

All in all, picking up Ince on a free transfer has proven to be smart business from Reading. Expectations for him were low when he originally joined on loan from Stoke City, but he’s gone on to be an important player - albeit unable to keep Reading in the Championship.

Ince is the eighth winner of the TTE player of the season award, joining the following:

2015/16: Oliver Norwood
2016/17: Yann Kermorgant
2017/18: Modou Barrow
2018/19: Andy Yiadom
2019/20: Rafael Cabral
2020/21: Josh Laurent
2021/22: John Swift

Tomares

Tom Ince Is Your TTE 2022/23 Player Of The Season