Replacing the irreplaceable

Image - Jon Candy

After months of whispers and a day of rumours, David Moyes was eventually sacked by Manchester United on Tuesday. Among all of the "where did it all go wrong?" hand-wringing, plenty of writers have emphasised the Ferguson factor. Whatever Moyes did, he was always going to be compared to the man who epitomised United for three decades - and compared unfavourably.

Some of those writers have gone on to draw parallels with previous unfortunates such as Wilf McGuinness, who had a similarly disastrous reign at the club after Sir Matt Busby. This got us wondering - where does the "chosen one" rank when compared with other managers who had to follow a legend?



Note that I found the statistics for this post at the excellent http://www.managerstats.co.uk/


I've compared some of the most famous and celebrated managers in English football with their immediate successors. No list such as this can be exhaustive and it's entirely opinion-based, so feel free to disagree with who I've chosen. That being said, I've tried to represent a selection of eras, and of clubs - and I've imposed some limits to keep the list manageable.

Each of our "legendary" managers must satisfy the following criteria:

- Won the English top division with the club (So don't write in about Jock Stein)
- Did so since 1960 (So don't write in about Herbert Chapman)
- Managed the club for at least 200 games total (So don't write in about Joe Fagan)
- Has since been replaced! (So don't write in about Arsene Wenger)

Using these rules, I've ended up with a list of 19 managers - and there's not many on here that anyone would argue hasn't achieved legendary status at their respective clubs:

So, quite a list. And let's have a look at the record that comes with it:

It's a lot for anyone to live up to. These managers spent on average more than 600 games at their club - to put that into context, the average Premier League manager lasts less than 100. All told, these managers won more games than they drew or lost put together, and averaged two major honours every three seasons. A hard act to follow - but in every case, someone had to. So, let's have a look at who did.

Just as Brian Clough appears twice on the legends list, so Terry Neill has the unenviable distinction of twice replacing a successful manager - Bertie Mee at Arsenal after four years following Bill Nicholson at Spurs. Clough himself appears again, for his famous 44 day reign as Leeds coach. So, let's have a look at how the two lists compare.

Firstly, we'll have a look at our overall spread. In the graph below, the further to the right a manager is, the longer his stay at a club. The nearer the top he is, the higher his win percentage during that time. Our 'legends' are in red, the successors in blue.

This graph shows us two things - firstly, that the legends are unsurprisingly far more likely to stay at the club longer, and have high win percentages. But the second thing is slightly less obvious. We can see that in actual fact the win percentage for some of the successors is high - higher than some of the legends! Of course, much of this depends on individual clubs. So it makes more sense to compare like with like, e.g each manager with their own predecessor, if we are going to place David Moyes in the overall hierarchy. Let's do this over three different criteria, then bring it all back together.

First up, games managed. For this first criteria, we don't need to worry about predecessors straight away, so let's first look at how Moyes's single season stacks up against the other 18 who followed a legend.

It's not good. Only two managers lasted less time - Brian Clough only managed Leeds for 7 games, while Malcolm Allison's first spell took in 45. Just ahead of Moyes is Avram Grant, the other one-season wonder on the list. While less relevant than in the two categories we are going on to, let's have a look at how the manager's length in charge ranks against their respective predecessors.

Moyes drops to 18th of 19, with Clough unsurprisingly staying at the bottom. The former Derby manager lasted less than 1% of the matches Revie had managed, compared with Moyes 3.5% of Fergie's United career. Terry Neill takes top spot, ahead of Bill Paisley, for his time at Arsenal after Bertie Mee.

Onto the next category. We're going to compare win percentages, so again we'll do this in two stages - compared to the other successor manages and then as a percentage difference to each former boss. David Moyes' overall win percentage of 52.94 was actually pretty impressive compared to most, so it's no surprise to see him quite high up this first table:

And even if we compare him to Sir Alex, the drop in win percentage is less than the majority of the successors we are looking at, although a number managed an even smaller drop or even an increase:

Of course, win percentage means nothing if a team doesn't lift a trophy season after season. And this is the final criteria we are going to examine - honours per game. The aim is to have as low a number as possible in this category - e.g., the least number of games per major honour won. The stats I am using include the Charity Shield as a major honour along with league and cup wins...questionable but we'll allow it for now!

Again Moyes comes off well here. Only 11 managers are included, as the other 10 successors failed to win anything. Obviously the caveat here is that the Charity Shield win in Moyes very first game in charge  has somewhat altered the statistics. The same could be said of Malcolm Allison above him...

What about when we compare the managers to their previous bosses? Again, Moyes does well:

So what have we learned? Well, the Moyes era was, under all of our criteria, a step backward for United. So far, so obvious. But we can also say that perhaps, looking back in years to come, he won't quite be alongside some of the most famous flops to replace an irreplaceable manager. As a final chart, if we account for all three of our criteria together, David Moyes places....(drumroll)....

So better than some, including both of Sir Matt Busby's unfortunate successors, but far from the heights managers such as Paisley, Mackay and Terry Neill - at least at Arsenal! Even less than spectacular reigns, such as Goerge Graham at Leeds, finish above him, but the manager he ends up tied on points with is...