Why big name managers do not bring more points to smaller Premier League clubs

Rafa Benitez. Carlo Ancelotti. These are high-profile managers. They are the current and former Everton managers. Ancelotti did not and Benitez has not delivered better results than a lower-profile alternative could have. It is possible no high-profile manager will.

On Monday Benitez watched Everton win for the first time in nine Premier League games. Results will probably be better in the rest of the season than they have been so far. But how much better?

Farhad Moshiri owns three-quarters of Everton. He bought half in 2016 and another quarter in two instalments afterwards. Everton’s payroll has risen, but maybe not as much as some people might think

I have accounts for Premier League clubs going back to the start of the millennium. Everton used to rank tenth for wages. Some seasons higher, other seasons lower, but not by much. On average, tenth.

In the three seasons from 2017-18 to 2019-20 Everton’s wages rank was either seventh or eighth. Accounts for last season and this season have not yet been published.

In the Premier League Ancelotti got Everton to 12th in the second half of 2019-20 then tenth last season. Benitez has them 12th less than halfway through this season.

Everton’s payroll can be expressed in a different way. It used to be four per cent of the Premier League total. Then it rose to five per cent. Teams whose payroll represents five per cent of the Premier League total finish on average in eighth place with 56 points, which works out as 1.5 points per game. Ancelotti averaged 1.5 points per game. He was unfortunate not to have finished higher than tenth.

Benitez has averaged 1.2 points per game. There are grounds for thinking that figure will rise. There are no grounds for thinking it will rise above 1.5.

Benitez and Ancelotti are big names who have managed big clubs around Europe. They have won national and international trophies. At clubs with big budgets they fulfilled reasonable expectations. At clubs with smaller budgets they also fulfilled reasonable expectations. At big-budget clubs reasonable expectations were high. At smaller-budget clubs reasonable expectations were lower.

There is no evidence I can find that high-profile managers who go to lower profile clubs consistently achieve results that surpass reasonable expectations – that is to say, no evidence that high-profile managers achieve better results than lower-profile managers at lower-profile clubs.

Benitez also managed Newcastle. That was when they were owned by Mike Ashley. In two full Premier League seasons he gained 44 then 45 points. His predecessors and successor averaged 45 points a season. I am talking here about managers who worked for Ashley in the Premier League between 2010 and 2021. Newcastle’s payroll during those years was fairly stable. It represented 3.5 per cent of the Premier League total, for which reasonable expectations are 45 points a season.

Gary Lineker said something once that stuck with me. It stuck with me because I had not heard anyone else say it before and it had not occurred to me. Lineker said that when he was a player he wanted a manager to tell him things that would help him get better but hardly any managers did.

If you said to me that Pep Guardiola could improve a player at any level I would not disagree with you. I think he probably could. Lineker did not say that no manager had helped him get better. Only that most managers had not.

Generally speaking, a high-profile manager at a lower-profile club will do no better than a lower-profile manager.

There is one situation, though, in which employing a higher-profile manager might still make sense. When a club is taken over and the playing budget increases enormously. That is not the situation at Everton.

When Jack Walker bought Blackburn they were in the Second Division and he could not persuade First Division players to sign until he appointed an elite First Division manager, Kenny Dalglish. Mohamed Al-Fayed employed Kevin Keegan as Fulham manager to persuade Premier League players to drop down to League One. It is as though top players say to themselves: if that manager trusts this owner then so will I.

Other suddenly enriched clubs since then have followed a similar policy. It is what might eventually do for Eddie Howe at Newcastle even if they stay in the Premier League this season.

My impression of Everton now is that actual expectations are higher than reasonable expectations, for fans and possibly the owner. That might be because of reports about their transfer spending. I have seen reports that Moshiri’s Everton have paid transfer fees of about £500 million gross and £300m net.

I treat reported transfer fees with caution. And even if I was sure they were accurate I would regard them as less reliable than wages as a guide to the strength of a squad. A transfer fee depends among other things on whether a player has a contract with another club and how long it should last. How much did PSG pay in transfer fees for Lionel Messi? He signed for nothing but he will not be working for nothing.

Stefan Szymanski, an expert in sport finance, wrote in a book called Money and Football: “Figures published in the newspapers about transfer fees and wages are only indicative. Usually these figures are leaked by the club or the player’s agent, and are not necessarily reliable or complete – they are certainly not audited numbers. Unlike the accountant, the reporter did not see the contract, the invoice, or the bank statement related to the transaction.”

Gerard Houllier and Brendan Rodgers managed Liverpool and both fulfilled reasonable expectations. Houllier later spent a season with Aston Villa and did not reach reasonable expectations, although I have no doubt he would have done in time if ill health had not forced him to step down. Rodgers went to Celtic and fulfilled reasonable expectations there before moving to Leicester and surpassing reasonable expectations for a couple of seasons, although this season results have gone slightly the other way.

Manuel Pellegrini met reasonable expectations at Manchester City then slightly underachieved at West Ham. If a lower-budget club have to pay more to get a high-profile manager they will usually be wasting their money.

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