Football Managers depend on their team?
Ellee Seymour has put me on to an article where Cambridge University have researched football and found that a football manager’s success is less to do with him, and more to do with his players and luck. Personally, this sounds like the same sort of junk research that comes up with all these stupid simplistic formulas that predict the best day of the year.
The problem with the "football managers are about luck" argument is that there’s at least a few cases, which off the top of my head, I don’t believe can simply be explained by good fortune. Luck does exist in football, and delivers more upsets than in most other sports. And the World Cup is a lot about luck, particularly as so many games come down to penalties.
It’s also without doubt important to consider the quality of players. Sides with deep pockets can normally buy better players which is more likely to guarantee success (although Blackburn Rovers had a big spend in the same season they were relegated). So, it’s worth contrasting the fortunes of clubs before, during and after the arrival of certain managers.
During his 5 years at Leicester City, Martin O’Neill took them into the Premiership, and kept them in the top half. They won the League Cup too. After he left, the team was relegated twice in 5 years. He also got Wycombe Wanderers into the league, and after he left Leicester and went to Celtic where he had huge success.
Under Guus Hiddinck, the performance of both South Korea and Australia was above people’s normal expectations for those teams. People weren’t tipping either to get past the first round, but both did.
On the other hand, under Roy Evans, Liverpool went from a side that almost never failed to win anything, to one that strugged to win anything.
We know that in business, management makes a difference. I’ve seen first hand, a manager take over a team, and raise motivation levels and invest more in training people, paying huge dividends. Steve Jobs return to Apple saw a troubled company rebuild itself into a mighty organisation. So, why shouldn’t football be the same?
RSS
And don’t forget Otto Rehhagel winning the European Championship with Greece, pretty much a team of nobodies. He also led Werder Bremen from the German second division back to the Bundesliga, straight to a UEFA place, then to a Championship soon after. Most of the players were not big stars (at least not until he made quite a few of them internationals), several of them were old players way past their prime he somehow managed (pun kind of intended) to rejuvenate and get the best out of. He also repeated a similar feat with Kaiserslautern about 15 or so years later.
Even in my teenage son’s football team, a change of manager made a great difference to his confidence, having someone who believed in his skills. He ended up being their top goal scorer last season, when previously he was hardly given any chances to show what he could do.