Sadio Mané & Jürgen Klopp take Premier League’s March Accolades

Mané and Klopp make it a double for Liverpool, winning the PL player & manager of the month awards

Sadio Mané’s stellar performances this past month have garnered him yet another award. The Senegalese winger who turned 27 on 10 April was named the EA Sports Player of the Month last week after his outstanding contributions to Liverpool’s title challenge for the month of March.

Having scored a brace against Burnley followed by a stunning opening goal away against Fulham, Mané was integral in Liverpool’s continued unbeaten run this past month. The EA Sports award winner is decided by votes received from the public via the EA Sports website which are combined with the choice made by the 20 PL club captains and a panel of experts. This is Mané’s second EA Sports award after having won it in August 2017. His fellow nominees for March were Everton’s Seamus Coleman, Southampton’s James Ward-Prowse, Leicester’s Jamie Vardy, Manchester City’s Bernardo Silva and teammate Andrew Robertson.

“It was a good month for me and the team. The dream of every player is to improve every season and so far, I’m happy but I’m sure I can do better. All the team, the club, the supporters are fighting for the Premier League title so let’s do it together,” Mane said after accepting the award.

Meanwhile, Jürgen Klopp won the Barclay’s Manager of the Month for the third time in his Liverpool career and the second time this season. He had previously won it in September 2016 and December 2018. With Liverpool going unbeaten for four games during March, Klopp was a clear winner after being nominated along with City’s Pep Guardiola, Leicester’s new manager Brendan Rodgers, Everton’s Marco Silva and Ralph Hassenhüttl who has revived Southampton since taking over in December 2018.

Jamie Carragher believes Sadio is more important for Liverpool than Mo!

How he could even attempt to make a choice is beyond me but then Gary Neville was the one who posed the ludicrous question “Who would Liverpool miss the least if they were ruled out for the run-in?” on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football. Evidently, in Gary’s mind, this was somehow warranted after Mané scored his 18th and Salah his 19th Premier League goal this season to beat Chelsea 2 – 0 at Anfield this past Sunday.

Jamie explained his decision saying:

They’ve got the same amount of goals. I’m a massive fan of Mane. People talk about Jurgen Klopp and the signing of Salah, unbelievable… Van Dijk. ‘Mane’s the one that got Liverpool back. He was Klopp’s first big signing £30m. He was the first signing that got Liverpool back into the top four, the next season was Champions League final, this one is challenging for the title so he’s the one that’s been there from the very start. If Liverpool or City win the league, a lot of it will be down to the wide players. When we challenged Manchester United in 2009, we didn’t have that wide player. Go through history at the teams who have won a title and the wide players stand out massively. I’d go as far as to say if we had Sadio Mane in that team in 2009 we would have possibly won the league, that was the only thing that was really lacking.
I think sometimes he goes under the radar. They’ve got Salah, Van Dijk at the back, the goalkeeper. Liverpool are going for their first title in 30 years and he’s the best wide player they’ve had in 30 years. You have to go back to John Barnes since Liverpool have had a player like that and that’s massive company because I think John Barnes is in the five or six best players to ever play for Liverpool.

On that last note though, Jamie is certainly not wrong! Thankfully though, we are in a great position to have both Mané and Salah fully fit and raring to go as things go down to the wire in the upcoming weeks.

May we continue to enjoy the ride!

Up the Mighty Reds!

Source: liverpooloffside.sbnation.com