Liverpool's Andy Robertson is on cusp of a serious award and I really hope he lands it

We’re nearly there. We’ve almost got a full team. If Andy Robertson is crowned the English Premier League’s Player of the Season then that’ll be the 11th time our southern cousins have set up a trestle table, plonked a wipe-clean cloth on top to hand out the individual awards for footballing excellence – and a Scot has walked off with one.

I’m joking about the modest staging – gong-giving ceremonies are glitzy affairs these days – but can remember blurry footage of a well-refreshed Andy Gray in a low-ceilinged room, dressed in wide lapels and a fat tie, collecting his prize from the Professional Footballers’ Association for season 1976-77. There was little razzmatazz but really there should have been. Gray was Player of the Year having a few minutes earlier made the same walk for Young Player of the Year and was the first to claim both.

Who says Robertson should win? Apart from you and me and others among his countrymen, none other than Alan Shearer, English icon, the first to the EPL prize and now yon chromedomed oracle on Match of the Day. Shearer made his nomination after another rampaging Robbo performance in last week’s Merseyside derby, culminating in the Scotland captain’s first goal in front of Anfield’s Kop.

Of course, it’s prizes all round these days. In England there are three different versions of the solo accolade, all presumably hoping they won’t suffer the fate of Betamax. Unlikely, since “the Prem”, as we’re often told, is the best league in the entire history of absolutely everything.

The EPL one is the newest and the 27 previous winners have included precisely no Scots. We shouldn’t feel too bad about that as only six of the recipients have been English. If the Scotland skipper was to triumph it would