Manager Impact Index – The Return

After an 8 game sabbatical (work taking over my time) I’ve now been able to update the Manager Impact Index with up to date figures, including the 3 newbies to the Premier League, Sherwood, Mel and Solskjaer.  More on those later.

Just as a reminder, the MII is a way of tracking and scoring each teams managers impacts on any particular game.  Castrol have a Manager League Table on the LMA website (here) which is based on wins and losses, goals and clean sheets and winning margins.  However, it doesn’t take into account any impacts before or during games or the level of opposition, so I provide a different level of detail.

Are managers sending their teams out to get the first goal?  Can they use half time to inspire a turnaround in the score?  Are the making the right choices when making substitutions?

Scoring is as follows:

Managers are also awarded, or deducted, points based on their wins, draws and losses, as per the chart below:

Essentially, the MII doesn’t care where the teams are in the EPL, only what the impacts of each teams managers have on the game.

Rather than jumping straight in with the current totals, i’m going to have a look at some specific areas first.

Substitution Impacts

The chart below shows the impacts delivered by substitutes (goals and assists).

We can see that, even having only been in charge of West Brom for 5 games, Pepe Mel has already used his subs to better effect than Chris Hughton who has still failed to record a sub impact this season.

Of managers who have been in charge for the full season, Hughton and Mourinho have had the least number of enforced substitutions (4), whilst Arsene Wenger has had the most with 13, followed by Pochettino with 9.  In percentage terms though, the new managers seem to be having a few injury problems:

Old v New

Now that the new managers have had time to settle in lets see how their performances so far compare to their predecessors.  To make it fair i’ll use the same number of most recent matches for each manager.

Using only impacts (not including win, draw or lose points), the chart for Mackays last 6 games v Solskjaers first 6 is as follows:

I’m surprised by this as Solskjaer has had a tough start to his Cardiff career, scoring zero in 2 of his 6 games, so to still beat Mackay by 4 points is quite a feat.  The 10 points earned for sub impacts (albeit 2 assists) go a long way to improving Solksjaers figures.

Don’t get too excited though Cardiff fans,  more will be revealed later in this post.

The comparison for AVB’s and Tim Sherwood’s last 9 games is below:

Ah, thats fairly conclusive then.  Sherwood has scored 76 more Impact points than AVB over the same amount of games.  He is at least as good as AVB in every aspect of having impacts on games, particularly when it comes to first goals in each half. 

Whilst I’m a fan of young managers being a chance, I thought the Spurs job would be too big and too soon foe Sherwood.  I made my opinion on the Sherwood appointment known on Twitter and, so far, he’s making me eat my words.  It appears it was a very astute appointment by Levy.  Or a lucky one.

Clarkes last 5 v Mels first 5 look like this:

Despite having zero 1st half impacts Pepe Mel has clearly had quite an influence on the West Brom team with more than double the impact points of Steve Clarke over the same number of games.  Mel clearly has the knack of turning things around at half time and eeking out the results.  One to watch I think.

What is clear from the above is that all of the 3 managers are currently having a bigger impact on their respective teams than their predecessors.  Does this prove that changing managers halfway through the season is an effective tactic?  It’s a bit early to tell but I for one will think twice in future about criticising clubs for doing so.  And then i’ll criticise them anyway.

Points Per Game

As there are now 6 new full time managers in the Premier League (not including Magathe yet or Monk as he’s officially only interim) I thought it best to have a look at the MII Points Per Game to see who is performing best since their time in charge.

Tim Sherwood is leading the way with with a huge 19.11 MII Points Per Game, closely followed by Pellegrini on 18.36.  Solskjaer is struggling at the bottom with a mere 7.33 PPG, just behind Meulensteen and we know what has just happened to him.  Worth noting that Di Canio went on 6.6 PPG and Jol on 8.2.  I think if Cardiff had a nutty owner they’d be looking for a replacement already.  Luckily for Solskjaer its Vincent Tan……ah……erm….

Current Table

So we reach the point of the overall table:

Pellegrini sits comfortably at the top on 459 points with a game in hand, Wenger letting things slip down to 2nd with 424 and Brendan Rodgers only 25 points behind that.

Whilst Mourinho has dropped to 4th, this isn’t as a result of him not having impacts, more as a result of Rodgers having so many.

David Moyes is about where he would’ve been last season with Everton and Allardyce is improving.  At last.

Next time i’ll show comparisons between the Premier League position and the MII position and see if we can work out which managers are under / over performing.  It’s very easy to pick on Moyes at the moment but i’ll resist that.

Ah, who am I kidding……

That’s it for now, see you after next week.  Don’t forget to say Hi on Twitter @trigsmith.