Newcastle managers come and go - results will not change that

There was only one response to Steve Bruce’s appointment as Newcastle manager. There are three things we could say about that response. Only one of them will turn out to be right. And I know which one I think is most likely.

The reaction to Bruce’s appointment was negative. I would have said it was overwhelmingly negative if I could recall even a single comment that was neutral or positive. I cannot.

On the day Bruce became Newcastle manager bookmakers made him favourite to be the next Premier League manager to go. Odds for Newcastle to be relegated tumbled. Everyone foresaw doom and gloom – fans, pundits, bookmakers and bettors.

At the end of the season there are three things we might be able to say about this reaction. We might be able to say it was spot-on, that it did not go far enough or that it went too far. Any of those three things is possible. Everything I have learned in nearly quarter of a century observing football and betting tells me that the most likely of those possibilities is that the reaction went too far.

Bruce replaced Rafa Benitez, who left to manage Dalian Yifang in China. Bruce, a Geordie who has supported Newcastle since he was a boy, is not popular. Benitez was popular. Why? Fans and pundits say that with Benitez as manager Newcastle overachieved. They strongly believe this to be true, but in my opinion it is not true.

What do we mean when we say a team overachieved? We should mean their results were better than average for their budget. Newcastle in the last two Premier League seasons gained 44 then 45 points. My reading of Newcastle’s payroll is that owner Mike Ashley in recent seasons has been paying for players who should average between 44 and 45 points.

Benitez delivered what Ashley could reasonably have asked for – no less, but no more. Other managers have done as much. The four Newcastle managers before Benitez were Chris Hughton, Alan Pardew, John Carver and Steve McClaren. They averaged 46 points per season.

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.

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.

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Naturally there were some seasons in which results were better than usual and others in which results were worse than usual. Pundits might say that in some seasons Bruce did a good job and that in others he did a bad job. I suspect that in every season he did a similar job, getting slightly better as he gained experience.

The manager has only one of many inputs into the performance of a team. And performances in the short term do not always feed through into results. A lot of variation in the results of a team should not be put down to the manager. We infer too much from the ebb and flow of football fortunes. We are like somebody who each day looks over a harbour wall and at every high tide forecasts never-ending floods and at every low tide forecasts never-ending drought.

Newcastle face a tough start in the Premier League. Their first nine opponents include Arsenal, Tottenham, Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea. Before the end of October they will have played all of the big six except Manchester City.

So Bruce does not begin with goodwill and he may not be able to build any quickly. But if he is allowed to keep going until the end of the season then, more likely than not, people will be pleasantly surprised – unless, of course, they have bet on Newcastle to do badly.

The six games in which a football club owner loses patience

Who will be the first Premier League manager to go? Odds for the winning selection in the Premier League sack race in the last 18 seasons ranged between 3-1 and 66-1.

Any manager can lose their job. And things can turn bad quickly. It seems to take just six games on average for a manager to lose their job.

For 22 seasons I have kept a record of Premier League managers who started a season but did not finish. For managers who were sacked I noted results in the games leading up to the dismissal.

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Let us divide the dozen games before a dismissal into groups of six. The half-dozen immediately before the dismissal we will call games one to six. The half-dozen before that we will call games seven to 12.

From games seven to 12 teams averaged seven points. Anyone who maintained that rate over a whole season would finish in the third quarter of the table, between 11th and 15th. So those teams had fared worse than most, but not by much.

Then everything went wrong. From games one to six teams averaged four points. Anyone who reproduced that rate over a whole season would finish 20th – bottom.

Managers can resign or retire. But most managers who leave are sacked. Why are they sacked? Not because of bad results as such, but because of unexpectedly bad results.

They are fired because expectations have been disappointed. Sometimes those expectations were reasonable. Sometimes they were not. But always, if only for a short while, they were disappointed.

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