"QPR and Cardiff lurk near relegation zone because of deluded expectations of their owners
Rod Liddle, The Sunday Times, 5th March 2023
When Michael Beale departed Queens Park Rangers at the end of November, he left with the highest win percentage of any QPR manager since Iain Dowie in 2008 and the second-highest in almost 40 years. Into his place came Neil Critchley who managed, during his briefish sojourn in west London, the lowest win percentage of any manager in the club’s 141-year history. That win percentage was a little over 8 per cent, since you asked.
Mr Critchley was duly shown the door at the end of last month and in came Gareth Ainsworth whose win percentage, at time of writing, is precisely zero. If there is something wrong with the west London club — and I suspect that there is — then my guess is that the various managers, Critchley probably included, are not primarily to blame. A surfeit of managers in far too short a period of time, perhaps. It has long been my contention that a rapidity of turnover in managers is indicative of a club heading inexorably downwards. Of course, to a certain extent that is a self-fulfilling prophecy — clubs tend to change their managers when they are doing badly in the hope that things might improve for a while, not when they are doing well.
But it goes a little deeper than that, touching on the deluded expectations of both the fans and more importantly, the club owners. QPR have had four managers in the past 18 months or so, which leaves no time for a coach to mark his imprimatur on the side. QPR are hovering close to the relegation trapdoor because the owners — and maybe fans — were not satisfied with upper mid-table finishes (usually attained after promising starts). But the way to improve upon mid-table finishes is to allow a manager to do so incrementally, as has occurred with the excellent Gary Rowett at my lot, Millwall, and Mark Robins at Coventry City — those are the two longest-serving managers in the Championship and I would suggest that with both clubs in or around the play-offs, that is the more profitable approach to take.
Longevity tends to breed success. Teams generally cannot gel under a managerial style in only a few months and a sacked manager is more often than not a mere scapegoat for a deeper malaise.
Such is perhaps the case at Cardiff City, who are now on to their seventh manager in a little more than three years, if you include Dean Whitehead’s two-week caretaker stint. The interesting thing is that every new manager appointed by the Cardiff owners has managed a win percentage slightly lower than his predecessor. If that doesn’t suggest to you that it is not the manager primarily who is to blame, then I don’t know what will. Steve Morison, sacked in November had a win percentage of 35 per cent. Mark Hudson, who took over, dragged that down to 22 per cent. In four years, Cardiff have gone from being a Premier League team, through a stage of being top-end Championship contenders, and then — via mid-table — down to relegation probables. In both cases — QPR and Cardiff — it is dissatisfaction with not being in the top six that has driven those sides down the table and could conceivably end in relegation for both.
Fourteen out of the 24 Championship clubs have changed their managers this season and four of them have done so twice. I added up the win percentages to see who, on average, has performed better — the new manager or the old manager. I found that the old managers had an average win percentage of 36.2 per cent and the new managers an average win percentage of 34.6 per cent, suggesting that on average switching your manager will actually lead to a worse outcome.
The caveats — these are pretty coarse statistics and do not differentiate between clubs who would rather their managers had not departed, such as Alex Neil from Sunderland and Nathan Jones from Luton Town, and the rest. But it is still at least indicative, and suggests that sacking the gaffer during a bad run is tantamount not only to shifting the chairs around on the Titanic but also hacking a new hole in the ship somewhere the iceberg didn’t hit.
This doesn’t mean that one should never change managers and there are two very clear examples in the Championship of where a switch has been very effective. By coincidence, those two teams played each other last weekend, with West Bromwich Albion beating Middlesbrough 2-0 at the Hawthorns. The Valencian Carlos Corberán has a win percentage at West Brom of 57 per cent, not far short of three times that achieved by predecessor, Steve Bruce. Corberán came close to being poached by Leeds United, such was his success. And then there is Michael Carrick at Boro, with a win percentage of 68 per cent, the highest in the division — better even than Vincent Kompany at Burnley, who has all that lovely parachute money to play with."
Rod Liddle, The Sunday Times, 5th March 2023
When Michael Beale departed Queens Park Rangers at the end of November, he left with the highest win percentage of any QPR manager since Iain Dowie in 2008 and the second-highest in almost 40 years. Into his place came Neil Critchley who managed, during his briefish sojourn in west London, the lowest win percentage of any manager in the club’s 141-year history. That win percentage was a little over 8 per cent, since you asked.
Mr Critchley was duly shown the door at the end of last month and in came Gareth Ainsworth whose win percentage, at time of writing, is precisely zero. If there is something wrong with the west London club — and I suspect that there is — then my guess is that the various managers, Critchley probably included, are not primarily to blame. A surfeit of managers in far too short a period of time, perhaps. It has long been my contention that a rapidity of turnover in managers is indicative of a club heading inexorably downwards. Of course, to a certain extent that is a self-fulfilling prophecy — clubs tend to change their managers when they are doing badly in the hope that things might improve for a while, not when they are doing well.
But it goes a little deeper than that, touching on the deluded expectations of both the fans and more importantly, the club owners. QPR have had four managers in the past 18 months or so, which leaves no time for a coach to mark his imprimatur on the side. QPR are hovering close to the relegation trapdoor because the owners — and maybe fans — were not satisfied with upper mid-table finishes (usually attained after promising starts). But the way to improve upon mid-table finishes is to allow a manager to do so incrementally, as has occurred with the excellent Gary Rowett at my lot, Millwall, and Mark Robins at Coventry City — those are the two longest-serving managers in the Championship and I would suggest that with both clubs in or around the play-offs, that is the more profitable approach to take.
Longevity tends to breed success. Teams generally cannot gel under a managerial style in only a few months and a sacked manager is more often than not a mere scapegoat for a deeper malaise.
Such is perhaps the case at Cardiff City, who are now on to their seventh manager in a little more than three years, if you include Dean Whitehead’s two-week caretaker stint. The interesting thing is that every new manager appointed by the Cardiff owners has managed a win percentage slightly lower than his predecessor. If that doesn’t suggest to you that it is not the manager primarily who is to blame, then I don’t know what will. Steve Morison, sacked in November had a win percentage of 35 per cent. Mark Hudson, who took over, dragged that down to 22 per cent. In four years, Cardiff have gone from being a Premier League team, through a stage of being top-end Championship contenders, and then — via mid-table — down to relegation probables. In both cases — QPR and Cardiff — it is dissatisfaction with not being in the top six that has driven those sides down the table and could conceivably end in relegation for both.
Fourteen out of the 24 Championship clubs have changed their managers this season and four of them have done so twice. I added up the win percentages to see who, on average, has performed better — the new manager or the old manager. I found that the old managers had an average win percentage of 36.2 per cent and the new managers an average win percentage of 34.6 per cent, suggesting that on average switching your manager will actually lead to a worse outcome.
The caveats — these are pretty coarse statistics and do not differentiate between clubs who would rather their managers had not departed, such as Alex Neil from Sunderland and Nathan Jones from Luton Town, and the rest. But it is still at least indicative, and suggests that sacking the gaffer during a bad run is tantamount not only to shifting the chairs around on the Titanic but also hacking a new hole in the ship somewhere the iceberg didn’t hit.
This doesn’t mean that one should never change managers and there are two very clear examples in the Championship of where a switch has been very effective. By coincidence, those two teams played each other last weekend, with West Bromwich Albion beating Middlesbrough 2-0 at the Hawthorns. The Valencian Carlos Corberán has a win percentage at West Brom of 57 per cent, not far short of three times that achieved by predecessor, Steve Bruce. Corberán came close to being poached by Leeds United, such was his success. And then there is Michael Carrick at Boro, with a win percentage of 68 per cent, the highest in the division — better even than Vincent Kompany at Burnley, who has all that lovely parachute money to play with."
