Analysing Managerial Performance - A Follow Up

While working on my previous blog post around ways to look at managerial performance I though the findings of expected points compared to actual points was quite interesting and thought I'd dig into this a little more.

The method behind this is to take the odds provided by Bet365 and give each team a % chance of winning or drawing a fixture. This can then be estimated into how many points the bookmakers think each team SHOULD be taking from a game.

For example for Blackburn vs Ipswich on the final day of last season the odds were

Blackburn Win - 3.3
Draw - 3.5
Ipswich Win - 2.3

This means the chances of each event occurring were as follows (with rounding taken into account)

Blackburn Win - 29.61%
Draw - 27.91%
Ipswich Win - 42.48%

From this we can estimate that Blackburn would be estimated to get at least 1.17 points and Ipswich 1.55 points.

As Blackburn actually won the game they obviously took 3 points (1.83 more than expected), while Ipswich took 0 points (1.55 less than expected)

The table for last season is below - it's amazing how many managers have left since the end of the season! 6 managers are now longer in their jobs - McLaren, Gray, Warburton, Jokanovic, Clark & Redfearn - while I have included Malky Mackay and Ian Holloway as they were in charge of Wigan and Millwall for most of the season.

The table throws up some interesting points

• It's no surprise to see Eddie Howe and Steve Evans near the top - both have done very well since guiding their respective teams out of League Two and to sustain that into the Championship deserves a lot of credit.
• Mick McCarthy has managed to work wonders with Ipswich, making the play offs this season against the odds
• Mark Warburton, Slavisa Jokanovic and Steve McLaren were harshly treated in being relieved of their duties.
• Alex Neil was perhaps expected to do well although still outperformed the odds - this maybe shows how good a team Norwich and when he took over.
• Managers such as Stuart Gray and Neil Redfearn who were thought to have done exceptionally well maybe didn't perform as good as the bias expected - they were marginally better than Russell Slade who Cardiff wants would like sacked!
• Chris Hughton and Steve Clarke took over in mid season and continued to struggle despite the bookies expecting them to turn it around
• It's clear why Malky Mackay and Ian Holloway were sacked - though interestingly both have positive away Expected points totals.

Looking at Norwich I wondered what the previous managers records looked like, especially with so many changes in the Championship so below is the record of every manager from last season

It's clear there's a lot more underperformance in this table, reflected by the lack of managers who achieved a positive difference in results. Of the ones that did 2 managed Watford!

• Maybe Adkins and Peeters were rather hastily dispensed with by their clubs, though both were suffering a downward turn in form at the time.
• Uwe Rosler is surprisingly low, he was excellent for Wigan in 2013/14 and it shows how bad they underperformed last season compared to expectations.
• Norwich were the case in point and Neil Adams massive underperformance despite leaving them just outside the play offs in January shows that the bookies expected them to be one of the best sides in the division.
• Sami Hyypia managed to wrack up an incomprehensible under performance in such a short space of time

While none of these findings are conclusive due to the small amount of games played and large volume of variance from game to game it's interesting to see which managers are perceived to be doing better than others.