The first of the English Premier League African Player of the Month awards will be given for the month of August. And the organisers, New African Soccer, have released a shortlist of names for the potential awardees for the month, which gave us the opening three fixtures of the Premier League.

In a release by New African Soccer, votes were received by email and by twitter and were scrutinised by the editorial team of the magazine, with detailed analysis of each choice in getting to the shortlist of three.

"We have received an encouraging number of tweets in support of the various African players that featured in the Premier League. And we have taken time to analyse each choice made, with our technically savvy editorial team, to arrive at these names", the statement went.

Tottenham Hotspur's Togolese player Emmanuel Adebayor, who featured in all three of the team's games so far, had a good number of supporters. He scored in the impressive 4-0 whitewash of Queens Park Rangers and put in a good display in their opening game against West Ham. However, he came unstuck in the game against Liverpool.

Former Manchester United star, Senegalese Mame Biram Diouf was another one. He was very average in his first two matches for Stoke City. But his performance, and solo goal that ensured a shocking 1-0 away win against the champions Manchester City has won him many admirers.

Swansea City is the surprise team of the League so far, registering as early pace setters. They are one of the two teams that still have a 100% success rate in the three games so far! and although he has not yet registered a goal, Ivory Coast international Wilfred Bony has been pivotal to their success so far. He has also received rave reviews.

"Of these three, a winner will be announced on Friday September 5", the New African Soccer statement added.

"We still want our readers to vote from these three persons so that our choice will be accepted by all. From September, we will seek to give a shortlist each week, stating the rationale behind our choices, in order to guide our followers by the end of the month, in seeing what informed our final choices", the statement concludes.