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Wouldn't be surprised if they all had entrance music soon
For someone who's clearly not all there he's got a pretty good grasp on the overall situation: Sanchez offski, his team are shite, Europa League next season.
The majority of their fans won't have accepted this yet.
Someone wrote an article on this subject the other day - statistically over the course of Premier League history you are better with a non-British manager by about 9 points per season.
He was on BBC London News the other day: "I just don't understand why the fan base is so divided.....I've never seen it like this before"
The Dane
here you go“What does he know about the Premier League?” Two decades on from Arsène Wenger’s arrival from Japan it remains a sneer posed as a question whenever an unknown overseas manager comes to England. Paul Merson and Phil Thompson’s visceral reaction to Marco Silva becoming Hull City manager in January was hardly unique.
Lawrie McMenemy had the same response when Mauricio Pochettino took over at Southampton. It barely matters that under Silva’s watch Hull have a fighting chance of staying up or that Pochettino rapidly proved himself far superior to the man he replaced, Nigel Adkins. Many in English football cling to the notion that British is instinctively a safer option.
Perhaps that is understandable but while we assume that a deep knowledge of the English game matters, new research by John Goddard, a professor of financial economics at Bangor University and a world-leading expert in the economics of professional sport, suggests otherwise.
Goddard has a database that records the success, duration and nationality of every managerial appointment from the late 1960s and when I asked him to crunch the numbers from 1992-93 to the end of last season a startling headline figure emerged.
The average league points per game for overseas managers in the Premier Leagueis 1.66 – while for their British and Irish equivalents it is only 1.29. The difference equates to a staggering 14 points over a 38-game season.
The obvious question is whether this is down to managerial talent or merely the higher propensity of the strongest teams in the Premier League – with Champions League experience and ambitions – to appoint foreign managers. It is not easy to untangle one from another and both certainly are important. Interestingly, however, the overseas-manager effect is also seen lower down the leagues. In the Football League the average points per game works out at 1.36 for British and Irish managers since the 1992-93 season, and 1.49 for foreign managers. In other words, a six-point improvement over a 46-game season.
Another thing that is worth stressing is that the preponderance of foreign managers among the top six Premier League clubs is a relatively recent phenomenon – between them Manchester United, Woolwich, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Spurs were managed by a British or Irish manager for more than half (54.9%) of games from 1992-93 until the end of last season. The success of overseas managers is not purely down to the recent dominance of the Big Six.
In his research, Goddard also examined all the instances in which British and Irish managers were replaced at the same club by a foreigner to see whether that was reflected in improved results. Again the results were intriguing. The average league points per game were 1.42 for the home managers – and 1.58 for their overseas successors. Half of that difference is down to Wenger’s better performance over 20 years than that of his predecessor Bruce Rioch, says Goddard. Even so, there is still a notable gap favouring the successors.
You might think that would lead to overseas managers lasting longer. However, the opposite seems to be the case. Between 1992-93 and 2015-16, there were 1,170 managerial spells by 544 different British and Irish managers in English football, with the average spell lasting 86.3 matches. Over the same period, 115 spells were completed by 80 foreign managers, with the average duration only 58.2 matches.
One potential explanation for this is that English club chairmen tend to set the bar higher for foreign rather than British appointees – and act more quickly and ruthlessly in dispatching a foreign manager whose team are underperforming relative to enhanced expectations.
This is not the first time, incidentally, that Goddard has dispelled popular myths. More than a decade ago his research with Stephen Dobson showed the ‘new-manager bounce’ phenomenon is inaccurate because improvements in form after a sacking tend to be just regression to the mean. Why? Well, dismissals usually follow a poor run of results – but those defeats are often down to random bad luck, injuries and a tough run of fixtures, which tend to even out. And when they do, those frustrating defeats and draws suddenly become wins.
Despite that research, clubs are more trigger-happy than ever. And Blake Wooster, the co-founder of 21st Club – a football consultancy that works with many of Europe’s leading teams – does not expect Goddard’s latest work to change everyone’s views. “Our minds are programmed to make us feel that familiarity with any task is important,” he says, pointing to one club he worked with recently who put experience of English football as one of their red lines in finding a new manager. “Experience feels safe. Yet the data tells us that, at least in football, having previous knowledge of the league is often overvalued. In other words: football is guilty of what we call ‘experience-bias’.”
Of course a manager’s talent, playing style and skill in bringing through young players matter more to most clubs than their nationality. Even so, Goddard’s research is perhaps another reminder of the paucity of talent among the current number of British and Irish managers. And as the eras where Sir Alex Ferguson dominated the Premier League and Terry Venables and Sir Bobby Robson won league titles abroad fade further into history, would it be any surprise if more English clubs looked overseas for their next manager?
It's an interesting article, but how reliable is it given that the top clubs almost always have foreign managers, but they also always have more money to spend?
“What does he know about the Premier League?” Two decades on from Arsène Wenger’s arrival from Japan it remains a sneer posed as a question whenever an unknown overseas manager comes to England. Paul Merson and Phil Thompson’s visceral reaction to Marco Silva becoming Hull City manager in January was hardly unique.
Lawrie McMenemy had the same response when Mauricio Pochettino took over at Southampton. It barely matters that under Silva’s watch Hull have a fighting chance of staying up or that Pochettino rapidly proved himself far superior to the man he replaced, Nigel Adkins. Many in English football cling to the notion that British is instinctively a safer option.
Perhaps that is understandable but while we assume that a deep knowledge of the English game matters, new research by John Goddard, a professor of financial economics at Bangor University and a world-leading expert in the economics of professional sport, suggests otherwise.
Goddard has a database that records the success, duration and nationality of every managerial appointment from the late 1960s and when I asked him to crunch the numbers from 1992-93 to the end of last season a startling headline figure emerged.
The average league points per game for overseas managers in the Premier Leagueis 1.66 – while for their British and Irish equivalents it is only 1.29. The difference equates to a staggering 14 points over a 38-game season.
The obvious question is whether this is down to managerial talent or merely the higher propensity of the strongest teams in the Premier League – with Champions League experience and ambitions – to appoint foreign managers. It is not easy to untangle one from another and both certainly are important. Interestingly, however, the overseas-manager effect is also seen lower down the leagues. In the Football League the average points per game works out at 1.36 for British and Irish managers since the 1992-93 season, and 1.49 for foreign managers. In other words, a six-point improvement over a 46-game season.
Another thing that is worth stressing is that the preponderance of foreign managers among the top six Premier League clubs is a relatively recent phenomenon – between them Manchester United, Woolwich, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Spurs were managed by a British or Irish manager for more than half (54.9%) of games from 1992-93 until the end of last season. The success of overseas managers is not purely down to the recent dominance of the Big Six.
In his research, Goddard also examined all the instances in which British and Irish managers were replaced at the same club by a foreigner to see whether that was reflected in improved results. Again the results were intriguing. The average league points per game were 1.42 for the home managers – and 1.58 for their overseas successors. Half of that difference is down to Wenger’s better performance over 20 years than that of his predecessor Bruce Rioch, says Goddard. Even so, there is still a notable gap favouring the successors.
You might think that would lead to overseas managers lasting longer. However, the opposite seems to be the case. Between 1992-93 and 2015-16, there were 1,170 managerial spells by 544 different British and Irish managers in English football, with the average spell lasting 86.3 matches. Over the same period, 115 spells were completed by 80 foreign managers, with the average duration only 58.2 matches.
One potential explanation for this is that English club chairmen tend to set the bar higher for foreign rather than British appointees – and act more quickly and ruthlessly in dispatching a foreign manager whose team are underperforming relative to enhanced expectations.
This is not the first time, incidentally, that Goddard has dispelled popular myths. More than a decade ago his research with Stephen Dobson showed the ‘new-manager bounce’ phenomenon is inaccurate because improvements in form after a sacking tend to be just regression to the mean. Why? Well, dismissals usually follow a poor run of results – but those defeats are often down to random bad luck, injuries and a tough run of fixtures, which tend to even out. And when they do, those frustrating defeats and draws suddenly become wins.
Despite that research, clubs are more trigger-happy than ever. And Blake Wooster, the co-founder of 21st Club – a football consultancy that works with many of Europe’s leading teams – does not expect Goddard’s latest work to change everyone’s views. “Our minds are programmed to make us feel that familiarity with any task is important,” he says, pointing to one club he worked with recently who put experience of English football as one of their red lines in finding a new manager. “Experience feels safe. Yet the data tells us that, at least in football, having previous knowledge of the league is often overvalued. In other words: football is guilty of what we call ‘experience-bias’.”
Of course a manager’s talent, playing style and skill in bringing through young players matter more to most clubs than their nationality. Even so, Goddard’s research is perhaps another reminder of the paucity of talent among the current number of British and Irish managers. And as the eras where Sir Alex Ferguson dominated the Premier League and Terry Venables and Sir Bobby Robson won league titles abroad fade further into history, would it be any surprise if more English clubs looked overseas for their next manager?
This bit:
"Another thing that is worth stressing is that the preponderance of foreign managers among the top six Premier League clubs is a relatively recent phenomenon – between them Manchester United, Woolwich, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Spurs were managed by a British or Irish manager for more than half (54.9%) of games from 1992-93 until the end of last season. The success of overseas managers is not purely down to the recent dominance of the Big Six."
Sanchez is a quality player but 300k a week is fucking insane. Smacks of desperation.
Apparently it's £300k pw basic.....and with win bonuses it could rise to as much as £300k pw
The funny thing is that they have a right to be desperate. He'll leave and join a winner for under £200k if he had to.
Sorry to continue this slightly off topic thing, but..Unfortunately, the British Manager and 'Black Manager' debate are all very similar to the general pattern of thinking that is at least common over here.
That is, that many British folk think that you should be given a job on the basis of something other than talent, application and attitude.
I personally think that Howe, Allardyce, Bruce, Dyche and Hughes are all guys who have show a knack that makes them employable for reasons other than being English and White. Allardyce especially has a reputation for taking advanced player management methods (physio and coaching) and applying them successfully. The press, however, will fixate on his accent and keep playing his "tippy tappy" comment over and over.
What some of the British managers (and press) fixate over is that the "Big clubs never hire them" - yet Moyes failed at Man Utd, Hughes failed at City, Liverpool gave Brenda and Kenny a go recently, we had Sherwood and Redknapp, which leaves Chelsea as the only other "Big Club" that have had a vacancy and not given it to an English manager in the last decade or so. It's all bullshit excuses.
That is, that many British folk think that you should be given a job on the basis of something other than talent, application and attitude.
I personally think that Howe, Allardyce, Bruce, Dyche and Hughes are all guys who have show a knack that makes them employable for reasons other than being English and White. Allardyce especially has a reputation for taking advanced player management methods (physio and coaching) and applying them successfully. The press, however, will fixate on his accent and keep playing his "tippy tappy" comment over and over.
What some of the British managers (and press) fixate over is that the "Big clubs never hire them" - yet Moyes failed at Man Utd, Hughes failed at City, Liverpool gave Brenda and Kenny a go recently, we had Sherwood and Redknapp, which leaves Chelsea as the only other "Big Club" that have had a vacancy and not given it to an English manager in the last decade or so. It's all bullshit excuses.
He could go to China making twice that amount and winning the same number of trophies - zero. Not to talk about the embarrassment week after week.
Why would he stay?
Use that money to extend Wenger's contract instead.
His body language this season suggests, to me, that he is already off to Chelsea in his head.