EPL Manager Index | Wenger, Pellegrini, Villas Boas and Martinez climb

Ok so Week 8 won’t go down as a classic Premier League week but there are still plenty of talking points for the Manager Impact Index.

Before I forget, i’d like to welcome Gus Poyet to the Index and we’ll catch up with his performance later.

The difficulty with the Index in the early weeks was that a manager could be in 20th place, have a good week and climb up to the top 5.  This was an unavoidable side effect of the points available but the good news is that it is starting to even itself out now.

For example, in week 3 the overall positive movements for all of the managers was 40, in week 4 it was 36, week 7 was 26 and in week 8 it was 17.  The top are slowly breaking away from the bottom and it is becoming harder to climb up the table.  Which is exactly what I was hoping would happen.  We also had the highest number of non-movers so far (5).

Week 8 returned the lowest number of impact points for 4 weeks, a paltry 241, with only 1 manager breaking 30.

Welcome, Arsene, to The 30 Club.  Wenger becomes the 7th manager to gain over 30 impact points in a week, although 32 points only sees him 6th in line for the throne which is still occupied by Steve Bruce.  No manager has yet scored 30 in 2 separate weeks, although I have a feeling it may happen soon.

As we can see, Poyet, in his first week in the Index, scored 2 points as a result of Sunderland not conceding a first half goal.  Luckily for him, conceding 4 in the second half didn’t cost him any minus points.  Di Canio only scored less than 2 points on one occasion, when he got zero points for the 3-0 defeat at West Brom.  Time will tell whether Poyet can have a bigger impact on results than Di Canio but its not a great start.

Brendan Rodgers had his 2nd worst week so far, having zero impacts during the game and gaining his points for getting an away draw.

Now I like Rodgers, and make no secret of the fact that he’s my kind of manager but his relative lack of impacts during games suggests that Liverpool may well not need him on match days and that they’d get the results regardless of whether he was there or not.

Substitute Impacts

Only 4 of the 20 Premier League managers still haven’t had a single goal or assist impact from a substitute.

Pull your fingers out Messrs Rodgers, Hughes, Allardyce and Hughton, even Ian Holloway has had 3!

Movers and Shakers

Wenger returns to the top after just 1 week away whilst week 7’s table topper, Pochettino, only drops one place to 2nd.

Martinez and Villas Boas are the highest climbers, climbing 6 and 5 places respectively.  The longest fall is only 3 places with Steve Bruce and Malky Mackay both making that journey.  There are only 6 points between 6th place and 10th place yet the only person to really capitalise on that this week was Roberto Martinez.

There may be a Premier League vacancy coming up in the next week or two with Ian Holloway under serious pressure, however, the same level of pressure should be on Allardyce and Hughton, neither of whom i’m sure are performing as their paymasters would like.  Allardyce banked some credits with his recent result over Spurs but Hughton must be very nervous, particularly after his board backed him in the transfer market.

It would be crazy for any of these managers to lose their jobs at this point in the season, not because they might turn their form around, they probably won’t, but because who is going to come in and make the difference that the clubs need without any transfers?  Another 8 weeks and they could be in the position of looking for another manager.

That said, Holloway has left Crystal Palace!

Have a great week everyone.

The table as of week 8 is as follows: