Chopping And Changing Managers ?

[andy g]

Article on the bbc website about the benefits of sticking with one manager.

link

But is that true ? Chelsea and Reading seem to be doing quite well with relatively new managers. Surely the important thing is to get a good manager ? Isnt this far more important than blind loyalty ? What do you think ?

[Alex_BCFC]

Article on the bbc website about the benefits of sticking with one manager.

link

But is that true ? Chelsea and Reading seem to be doing quite well with relatively new managers. Surely the important thing is to get a good manager ? Isnt this far more important than blind loyalty ? What do you think ?

Chelsea have endless money, therefore any reasonable manager should get them doing well- Mourinho happens to be pretty unique and a one off. Coppell has been at Reading almost 2.5 years now so reading are beginning to see the benefits of building up the squad. Chopping and changing managers is the worst thing you can do. It was laughable that some people on here suggested getting rid of Johnson.

[Nibor]

That report must be a total crock.

"the analysis proves conclusively that continuous changing of managers does not bring you the required success"

I can tell without even reading it that that's total bull, because whilst changing managers may contribute to a club being unsuccessful, a club being unsuccessful contributes far more how often they change managers.

These so called analysts should be aware that a positive correlation is not necessarily a causal relationship. Fact of the matter is, successful clubs are less likely to change managers and unsuccessful ones are more likely to and this will not change.

There's very little evidence that sticking with a manager who is unsuccessful eventually turns into success. The only cases where it happens (such as the often quoted Ferguson example) are when the majority of the reasons for the manager not being successful to start off with are beyond his control. Examples of this could be inheriting a very poor squad from day one they don't have the finances to fix yet, being forced to sell players, or when a manager comes to a club going downhill and it takes time to turn them around.

Judging whether a manager will become successful is entirely subjective and will long remain an interesting debate for fans.

Nibor

[Northern Red]

Article on the bbc website about the benefits of sticking with one manager.

link

But is that true ? Chelsea and Reading seem to be doing quite well with relatively new managers. Surely the important thing is to get a good manager ? Isnt this far more important than blind loyalty ? What do you think ?

Chelsea have endless money, and Reading are their Championship equivalent.

[Ian M]

I'm cynical about why they chose not to show the "win percentages" of the clubs they showed to have changed their manager most often when they had done so with the clubs shown to have employed the fewest managers. Could it be that there isn't much difference between them?

Anyway, the majority of those win percentages are around the 1 in 3 mark. Would someone care to remind me how many results (not scorelines) are possible in a game of football?

Incidentally, our win percentage during that period was 37.96% despite only being 1 managerial appointment short of making their list for the highest turnover of managers with 10.

This win percentage was better than 3 of the clubs highlighted as examples to the rest of us

[lotusman]

Pity Nibor does not have a minute or two to study the report for it does I'm sure support his thinking in many area's.I found much of it made sound sense,understanding the significance of change is particularly relevant to our situation where we have found it so difficult to secure long-term any form of a succesful manager.

How odd it is in one respect that one of our few bright spots in our recent past was achieved when we had 3 guys sharing the job!

[Robbored]

That report must be a total crock.

There's very little evidence that sticking with a manager who is unsuccessful eventually turns into success. The only cases where it happens (such as the often quoted Ferguson example) are when the majority of the reasons for the manager not being successful to start off with are beyond his control. Examples of this could be inheriting a very poor squad from day one they don't have the finances to fix yet, being forced to sell players, or when a manager comes to a club going downhill and it takes time to turn them around.

Nibor

Surely in the example you use - which probably applies to about 75% of football league clubs - giving a manager time (and therefore not removing him) is the way forward.

[Nibor]

Pity Nibor does not have a minute or two to study the report for it does I'm sure support his thinking in many area's.

It may well do but the point is you cannot say that there is conclusive proof that one thing causes another, when the reverse is also true. It doesn't matter what the statistics tell you, we all know that lack of success gets managers fired and firing managers repeatedly can make it less likely to have success. I didn't read the report originally because I couldn't see it linked, I have read it now.

While there is some good research in it, the conclusion that stability is the key to success based on that research isn't supportable.

Some examples of flaws in the report:

"An upward trend in dismissals" is supported by a graph of the actual data which just shows spikiness within the limits of normal variation.

Gary Johnson is mentioned as a manager who is an example of Managerial progression (moving to a higher league club) despite Yeovil being above us.

In the analysis of trends in managerial progression no allowance is made for the fact that with such small result sets the trends are not useful.

It mentions a correlation between wages and results, and then shows an extremely strong correlation of this, but this doesn't prevent it from concluding that swapping managers makes you win less completely ignoring the fact that winning less makes you swap managers and despite the correlation there being much less strong.

If I marked assignments at Warwick business school...

I found much of it made sound sense,understanding the significance of change is particularly relevant to our situation where we have found it so difficult to secure long-term any form of a succesful manager.

There are 24 teams in our league. How many get promoted every year? How many successful managers can there be? It's hardly surprising that we like many other clubs don't have lots of success, there's only so much of it to go around.

Surely in the example you use - which probably applies to about 75% of football league clubs - giving a manager time (and therefore not removing him) is the way forward.

I disagree. In this league for example we've seen that pretty much any team can beat any other on their day. The manager's job is to get that performance out of them every day. Sure some players are better than others but most of them are "good enough" to have some sort of success. Besides, I mean success relative to what that club could realistically expect given it's income - obviously very subjective and difficult to come to a firm conclusion on.

I'm not a fan of changing managers willy nilly, not at all, and I know it can be damaging. I'm just pointing out the flaws in the conclusions there, hardly surprising given the LMA probably commissioned it.

Nibor