What makes a Newcastle manager popular and how does the takeover change the job?

Newcastle fans loved Rafa Benitez. They did not love Steve Bruce. Why? Benitez was said to have overachieved, Bruce was said to have underachieved. Yet the two managers delivered similar results with similar payrolls.

Fans liked Benitez’s tactics. They did not like Bruce’s tactics. Yet most of the time the tactics were the same.

How can we make sense of this?

Jonathan Haidt explained in a book called The Righteous Mind that people form opinions then come up with reasons to justify them. Everyone thinks it is the opposite way round. Or they think it is the opposite way round for them. They will accept that others get their ideas from their emotions then find arguments to support them. We all think we are different.

Benitez and Bruce managed Newcastle for two full seasons in the Premier League. Benitez gained 44 then 45 points, Bruce gained 44 then 45 points.

Newcastle’s payroll under former owner Mike Ashley oscillated around 3.5 per cent of the Premier League total. Other clubs with comparable payrolls have averaged between 44 and 45 points. Reasonable expectations for Newcastle then were between 44 and 45 points.

At the start of Bruce’s first season I wrote in this column: “There is no reason why Bruce should not be able to deliver what a regular Premier League club are paying for. He has been a manager now for more than 20 years. When you have been in a job that long you know how it should be done.”

Elaborating on that claim I wrote: “Bruce has managed four other clubs in the Premier League – Birmingham, Wigan, Sunderland and Hull. He supervised 392 games and gained 439 points. My interpretation of the payrolls of those clubs is that the owners collectively would have been entitled to anticipate 439 points. Exactly what they got.”

Bruce’s Newcastle tenure ended badly. When he left last week Newcastle were in the relegation zone with three points from their first eight games of this season. Benitez’s tenure started badly. Newcastle were in the relegation zone when he was appointed for the last ten games of 2015-16 and at the end of the season they were relegated.

Overall Benitez delivered more or less what Ashley and fans could reasonably have asked for. So did Bruce. Yet Benitez was revered and Bruce was reviled. Why? Fans might think Ashley could and should have provided all his mangers with larger payrolls, but that is something else.

Benitez set up his team with characteristic caution. There were Newcastle games against the Big Six when Benitez’s game plan seemed to be to lose 1-0. They would defend, then concede, then carry on defending.

Bruce also set up his team to play conservatively most of the time. Sometimes he responded to fan pressure and encouraged Newcastle to play adventurously, and then results tended to wobble. Fans were never going to say: “Bruce did what we asked for and it did not work. We were wrong.” They were always going to ignore what they had asked for and blame Bruce for any bad results.

Why did Newcastle fans have good feelings towards Benitez and bad feelings towards Bruce? Part of the answer may be that Benitez had champions in the media. They repeated the unfounded claim that Benitez was overachieving. Another part may be that fans looked on Benitez as someone who had managed big clubs, and they wanted Newcastle to become a big club again. They looked on Bruce as someone who had managed only small clubs.

Fundamentally, though, there was something in their gut that made them like Benitez and dislike Bruce. Why am I defending Bruce? Probably because for reasons I do not understand I warm more to Bruce than to Benitez.

Bruce went two weeks after Newcastle were bought principally by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. He was almost certain to go at some point. Rich new owners want marquee players and marquee managers.

Over time Bruce had delivered what the old owner could reasonably have asked for. Starting in January the new owners will sign players who are paid a lot more. Could Bruce have presided over results that improved as the payroll improved? We will never know. In such circumstances we hardly ever find out whether a manager could have kept pace with rising expectations.

There are high-budget teams and there are low-budget teams. High-budget teams have highly paid players and highly paid managers. Low-budget teams have lower-paid players and lower-paid managers. The first group of players, generally speaking, are better than the second group of players. Are the first set of managers better than the second set of managers, or do they just get better results because they have got better players? There is probably no way of telling.

Only rarely does a high-budget club appoint a manager from a low-budget team. They might do this if the manager has noticeably exceeded reasonable expectations. Does that mean the manager was better than others at the lower level, or did he and the players get lucky for a while? Again there is probably no way to be sure. Owners might take soundings, request background checks, ask for interviews to be conducted. Ultimately they go with their feelings.

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