Tyler Bindon Is Your TTE Reading 2023/24 Rookie Of The Season

The young centre-back came out top of a crowded, highly contested field...

Congratulations to Tyler Bindon! He’s won the TTE 2023/24 award for Rookie of the Season, and did so comfortably in the end, coming out well on top of a strong 13-man shortlist.

He joins Lewis Wing in picking up a post-season TTE award. Reading’s playmaker-in-chief was named our Player of the Season, as well as picking up the equivalent club award. Bindon finished second for each of those himself, so winning the Rookie award is no real surprise.

What was less predictable however was how the rest of the voting would unfold. And, in the end, it was remarkably close. The way our system worked was to ask you to grade each of the 13 candidates out of five - we then weighted each score: one mark for a 1/5, five marks for a 5/5, and so on.

Although Bindon came top with a whopping 578 points, well ahead of second, that’s where things get interesting. Nelson Abbey (458) pipped Kelvin Ehibhatiomhan (452) to the runner-up spot, with another four separated by razor-thin margins for third through seventh.

Jeriel Dorsett (418) snuck into fourth by one point, with Ben Elliott (417) getting fifth by two points. Commiserations to Charlie Savage (415) and Michael Craig (405) who were desperately unlucky to miss out on the top five.

Here’s how the voting looks overall:

And this is how each player’s individual voting breaks down:

A few observations from those results:

• I expected Bindon to win, but getting that many 5/5s (91% of his total) really is outstanding
• Abbey taking second was also no surprise, but I thought he’d finish further ahead of third. Had he stayed for the full season, I reckon he’d have won the award outright
• Ehibhatiomhan, Dorsett and Elliott did better than I anticipated, at the expense of Savage and Craig
• Clinton Mola getting eighth, just below the top pack, shows just how well he turned things around in the second half of the season. Given how lowly he’d been regarded for so much of the campaign, finishing that high is very respectable
• Although the bottom five are noticeably lower, I feel that’s more about a lack of game time than any of them underperforming

Bindon’s 2023/24 wasn’t absolutely perfect, but it was still excellent for someone so new to first-team English football. He showed terrific reading of the game and technical ability from early on and, although his lack of know-how was sometimes brutally exposed - Blackpool away, Barnsley at home as two examples - he came on leaps and bounds by the end of the season.

From being effectively a youth player last summer to a vital first-team player now, Bindon brings so much balance and composure to Reading’s back line. It’s hard to see this side working quite as well as it does in terms of build-up play without Bindon there, and he certainly complements centre-back partner Amadou Mbengue - a more aggressive and quick defender - excellently.

Bindon joins the following players in winning our Rookie award: Jake Cooper, Aaron Tshibola, Liam Kelly, Omar Richards, Andy Rinomhota, Tom McIntyre, Tom Holmes, Femi Azeez and Nesta Guinness-Walker.

Congrats Tyler!