EPL Manager Index | Wenger & Mourinho in Top 3, Rodgers rebounds

For details of how the EPL Manager Impact Index operates, and the criteria for points, see this post (http://eplindex.wpengine.com/38232/premier-league-manager-impact-index.html).

Weeks (games) 13 and 14 have just been played so this is an update for both weeks.  I thought about just writing an update of all points at Week 14, however, something special happened last Sunday for Hull City fans (which I am) so I had to give Week 13 a little mention.  Hull City managed to beat Liverpool for the first time in their history.  A great 3-1 result for City in a game they were generally expected to lose (I predicted a 2-0 loss but then that’s me).  I have criticised Steve Bruce’s tactical nous recently but I have to say he got it spot on at the weekend.  Humble pie doesn’t taste that bad.

Week 13

Here are the points for Week 13:

Oops.  Not only did Steve Bruce earn his 2nd highest points of the season, Brendan Rodgers scored his lowest.  Not only that but the score of -4 ties with Michael Laudrup (Week 10) as the lowest scores attained so far.

Week 13 saw the return of Tony Pulis to the Premier League with him scoring 2 points for keeping a 2nd half clean sheet against Norwich.  Off and running Tony!

Moving swiftly on…..

Week 14

As fully expected, Martin Jol lost his job at Fulham and was replaced at the helm by Rene Meulensteen, taking his first steps into football management.  The 3rd new Premier League manager of the season, with more to follow I’m sure.  Looking at the Manager Impact Index table, if I was Sam Allardyce I would be sweating.  Which he probably is anyway.

Arsene Wenger Love-in

All the talk about who will win the Premier League is around whether it will be Pellegrini or Mourinho.  It amazes me how people are discounting Arsene Wenger, his Manager Impact score is outstanding:

Wenger is clearly the most adept manager at having an impact on his team, both before games and at half-time and has the 3rd highest impact with his substitutions.  His average points per week is ahead of anyone else and is way ahead of the average.  Managers’ average points per week is shown on the chart below:

If Arsene can continue with this domination he will storm the Manager Impact Index and may well have the Premier League wrapped up nice and early.  He has yet to let a half-time winning position slip into either a draw or a loss and has managed clean sheets in 19 out of 28 halves, suggesting both that his half-time team talks have the desired effect and he sends his teams out with clear objectives.

You might not like him but you’ve got to admire him.  This season anyway.

Substitute Impacts

Chris Hughton is the last of the original managers this season to score any points from an impact by a substitute, even Poyet has managed one already in his 7 games.

Whilst Laudrup leads the way with the most impact, Steve Clarke has actually had more impact on separate games, with successful substitutions in 6 games, compared to Laudrup’s and Pellegrini’s 5.

Ba is the most prolific substitute with 3 impacts overall, all coming in the last 2 games.

The 30 Club

Just one new manager joins The 30 Club from the last 2 games: Michael Laudrup, who achieved 33 points from the 3-0 win over Newcastle.  Wenger and Mourinho have both scored 30+ points from 1 of their last 2 games, however, both were already members of The 30 Club.  Worth noting that Wenger’s score of 38 points from his 3-0 win over Cardiff is the second highest so far this season, trailing Steve Bruce’s current record by just one point.

The Negative Collective

As with The 30 Club there is just one new addition as mentioned above, Brendan Rodgers with -4.  Sam Allardyce adds another negative score to his season with another -2.  That’s 3 times this season that Allardyce has managed negative scores.  Shocking.

The Table

Of course the 3 newbies are propping up the table so let us ignore them, for now.  Allardyce and Hughton need some sort of miracle to help them achieve their pre-season objectives, which I’m sure were leaning more towards Top 10 places than avoiding relegation.  Pochettino is on the slide, maybe as a result of the MoM curse and Martinez and Mourinho are climbing. Both Pardew and Bruce have dropped 4 places, with the middle of the table becoming very changeable week on week.

That’s all for now, any comments or questions please leave a comment or tweet me at @trigsmith.

The up to date table with figures is below: