Changing the coach/manager isn't the answer

 The New Year may typically be the season of goodwill, but two of football’s biggest clubs chose to swing the axe. Private equity-owned Chelsea sacked head coach Enzo Maresca, while Manchester United ditched Ruben Amorim.

The two teams have since slipped from fifth and sixth in the league respectively to seventh and eighth. In the hotly contested race to reach the Champions League, those few places are pivotal for a club’s financial fortunes.

Chelsea’s owners chose to hire from within their (small) multi-club operation, bringing in Liam Rosenior from the French club they own, RC Strasbourg. MCOs regularly trade players, but moving a manager within the group will be an experiment worth watching.    United are set to wait until the summer to appoint a permanent replacement for Amorim, with Crystal Palace coach Oliver Glasner among the favourites.

The double sacking raises an important question — do head coaches actually make that much of a difference? The available research suggests not.

In their book Soccernomics, FT columnist Simon Kuper and economics professor Simon Szymanski ran through several data sets on English football in an effort to quantify the importance of a manager when it comes to results. The findings were stark. On their reckoning, just 1 in 10 football managers had a statistically significant positive impact on points won.

Even that might be an exaggeration. Drilling down into the individual names on the list suggests that some of the “special ones” overperformed because they brought new knowledge to English football — perhaps in the form of international scouting networks or (pretty basic) improvements in nutrition or fitness training. Once those practices became more widespread, the overperformances faded. Others benefited from a strong youth academy producing talent, or perhaps just a good run of luck.

From Soccernomics:

'The general obsession with managers is a version of the “great man” theory of history, the idea that prominent individuals cause historical change. Academic historians binned this theory decades ago.'

Kuper and Szymanski instead argue that player wages are by far the most important factor in determining success. Pay more, win more.   At most top clubs, decisions on which players to sign and how much to pay them no longer rest with the head coach. Both United and Chelsea have sporting directors charged with building the playing squad, and owners who take a keen interest in transfers.

As Twenty First Group, a data-driven sports consultancy, points out, that may be where the problem lies.   ‘Our research shows that a coach’s past success rarely predicts future performance. What matters far more is the environment they inherit — the systems, clarity, and decision-making structures of the club. Without the right organisational conditions, even elite coaches struggle. Change the coach without changing the conditions, and history tends to repeat itself.’

Indeed, the FT’s chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch explained last year that United’s record in the transfer market had been so dismal for so long that the head coach was becoming irrelevant.

In Soccernomics, Kuper and Szymanski also argue that the job of a head coach or manager has changed dramatically, and with it the skills deemed desirable.  The forte of most managers is not winning matches but keeping the interest groups in and around the club (players, board, fans, media, sponsors) united behind them. That’s why so many managers are charismatic.

So when things aren’t going well, the coach is a useful figurehead to offer up as “soccer’s version of the Aztecan human sacrifice”. Both Amorim and Maresca had gone public with their grievances about the situation off the pitch shortly before being shown the door.

United and Chelsea both have a lot in common. They are underachieving in the Premier League relative to the past, have complex and divided ownership groups, and have embarked on major restructuring off the pitch. Both have also spent heavily in recent years in pursuit of success, and are in a race to show signs of improvement.

But while United and Chelsea have changed the coach, neither have changed the conditions. Data, and history, suggest that results on the pitch are unlikely to improve.