By Jason McKeown (with graph and stat support from Alex Scott)

Bradford City’s decision to sack Stuart McCall this weekend is very understandable looking at the League Two table. With 13 points from 16 games they are 22nd in the division. Their form over the last 10 games is the worst in the division.

It’s clear the Bantams need a short-term bounce. The type you typically associate with a change of manager.

Other League Two clubs have already made changes to the person in the dugout this season, with positive results. Tranmere were 17th in League Two when they fired Mike Jackson. They’ve subsequently climbed to 12th, with new manager Keith Hill winning four of his six games at the helm so far. Mansfield Town gave Graham Coughlan the boot nine winless games in, with the Stags third bottom. Nigel Clough has won five and lost just once in nine games since taking over, and Mansfield have edged up to 19th. Salford’s decision to sack Graham Alexander was controversial, but since Richie Wellens came in they’ve won half their matches and climbed a place in the table.

Bradford City desperately need a similar type of upwards improvement from the displacing of McCall. But unfortunately, when it comes to new manager bounces at Valley Parade, history is against them. The simple truth is that a change of Bantams managers has very rarely led to any immediate uptick in form. 

We’ve run the stats of the last 25 years, which neatly take us to pretty much the exact point of when Chris Kamara took the managerial reins from Lennie Lawrence. And the figures suggest that Kamara himself is probably the last time City benefited from a new manager bounce, at least mid-season.

So over this 25-year period, Stuart McCall’s second stint in charge saw the best start of any new Bradford City manager, with an impressive 35 points from the first 20 games. That was less of a new manager bounce though. Firstly, because it came at the start of a new season. And secondly, as we will come onto explain, the form prior to when he took over had been outstanding.

For similar reasons we can also rule out Colin Todd’s 31 points from being considered a pure ‘new manager bounce’, given he took over at the start of a season (2004/05). Kamara’s 32 points from 20 games from the midpoint of 1995/96 is very commendable. And Peter Taylor started life well after replacing McCall (unfortunately, the eight league games that followed Taylor’s initial 20 yielded just 5 points, the beginning of the end). 

Digging deeper, we decided to look at how each the first 20 games of each Bradford City manager would have translated over a full, 46-game season. Perhaps a tad unfair on Chris Hutchings and Jim Jefferies, who at the time were managing in the 38-game Premier League, but it allows for a fairer comparison to model how everyone’s starts would look if they were maintained over a 46-game campaign. 

Using Statzone figures for average points that are typically needed to earn automatic promotion, finish in the play offs, stay up and go down, McCall’s 2nd spell is the closest we’ve had to a manager starting off with top six form over the first 20 games. The 80.5 points that the start to 2016/17 was projected to achieve would typically have been enough for a fourth place finish.

(City actually finished that season on 79 points, so the projection was a pretty accurate one. In that season, Phil Parkinson’s Bolton took the second automatic promotion spot with 86 points.) 

Kamara, Taylor and Todd would have just missed out on achieving play off finishes based on these season projections. But, wow, is there is a big drop off in how City managers started after that. Nicky Law, Paul Jewell, Phil Parkinson and possibly Gary Bowyer would have just about avoided the drop based on their managerial starts. For everyone else, it would have been relegation had their slow starts continued.

Chris Hutchings has the worst record, but what’s remarkable about his projected points of 26.8 – albeit it over a 46-game season rather than 38 – is that City ultimately ended the 2000/01 season with 26 points. So if anyone is clinging onto a long-standing view that Hutchings should not have been sacked in November 2000, some good news. The figures suggest his removal made absolutely no difference to City’s performance that season.

But looking at 20-game starts can lack a bit of context. After all, what events had transpired before the arrival of a new manager? So, next we looked at City’s league record for the 20 games before the next incumbent took charge (the back end of the previous manager’s reign, plus any games where there was a caretaker at the helm), to see if the arrival of a new manager caused any uptick in form. 

First, here’s the table – with the 20 games before and after modelled over a 46-game season. 

It’s at this point that the start of McCall’s second stint begins to look less impressive. For the last 20 league games of Parkinson’s reign – the end of the 2015/16 – were incredible. Parkinson picked up 42 points from his final 20 league matches, as City made a successful last push for the play offs. Over a 46-game season, such a record would have seen City reach almost 100 points.

Against that context, McCall’s 35-point start to 2016/17 was a decline, even though it is the best start a City manager has made over these 25 years. What this really underlines is what an amazing calendar year 2016 was for City – add Parkinson’s last 20 games to McCall’s first 20, and City picked up 77 points from 40 matches. Oh for a repeat of that now!

What these figures also show is just how under-appreciated Colin Todd remains, with an initial improvement in results of 94% over what Bryan Robson had achieved over the final 20 games of his tenure. But there are lies, damned lies and statistics – Michael Collins was overseeing a 43% improvement on Simon Grayson before he was sacked.

Peter Taylor and Nicky Law also score well in improving results. Whilst Kamara’s 23% uplift is still good, it’s less of a notable bounce compared to others.

As if to further prove the Hutchings-shouldn’t-have-been-sacked theory, Jim Jefferies’ first 20 games saw absolutely no change in the Bantams’ fortunes. Hutchings, you were wronged! (Well, until you notice the 42% decline in results he oversaw from the end of Paul Jewell’s tenure.)

There have been plenty of new managers who have overseen a tail off in results after coming in, which very much tallies with the club’s post-2000 decline. A fact that is really brought home when you plot them on a graph. 

So the green bars here are where a City manager’s first 20 league games in charge were an improvement on the previous 20, and red bars are where the first 20 games in the hotseat saw worse results. 

Kamara, Jewell, Nicky Law, Robson, Todd, McCall (first spell), Taylor, Parkinson, Collins and Hopkin oversaw a bounce of sorts. Although some of them come with an asterisk.

In the case of Todd and McCall’s first spell, they began just as City were starting life in a lower division following relegation. So the fact they’re facing weaker opposition over their first 20 games, compared to the 20 that preceded their arrival, means an improvement would naturally be expected. Jackson and Collins also didn’t reach the 20-game milestone, so their records are incomplete. Especially Collins, who did after all only get six league games.

It’s hard to credibly keep Robson and Hopkin in these lists too. They took over at a time when City’s form was especially woeful, and only produced 5% and 11% improvements respectively on a very low base starting point. In both instances, Bradford City were heading for relegation when they took the reins, and both times the level of bounce they produced was still relegation standard form. Not what you would call a bounce.

So that really only leaves Kamara, Jewell, Law and Taylor out of the 18 instances of a managerial change who saw a significant improvement. With only Kamara and Taylor inspiring promotion-standard form over those first 20 games. (And even then, Taylor only managed to improve City’s league position from 16th to 14th.)

The big question therefore is – why don’t Bradford City benefit from a new-manager bounce? Perhaps, it’s because as some claim the whole thing is a myth. 2017 research by 21st Club argued 75% of it is down to luck. They analysed the top five leagues in Europe, concluding that clubs earned 0.8 points per game in the eight games prior to a managerial sacking, compared to 1.2 points in the subsequent eight. Yet match statistics, in terms of quality and quantity of chances created and conceded, were virtually identical.

Omar Chaudhuri, head of football intelligence stated, “What we see is that when managers are sacked, a lot of the times their teams have been playing okay, but without luck. It only needs one crucial moment per game to go against you and that is the difference between three points and one or one point and no points. In most cases sacked managers are unlucky.”

Hmmm – is this right? Well, let’s run those City figures again and see if they corelate. The following table is the average points per game City achieved prior to a new manager coming in, and the average after. 

What all this means is that, over these 25 years, City were averaging 1.06 points per game before a managerial change was made (take out Parkinson’s high average, where the change to McCall was not for performance reasons, and it’s 1 point per game). In the first 20 games after a change, on average 1.1 points per game have been acquired. That’s a lot of P45s and proclamations of a new era, for an initial bounce of just 0.04 points per game.  

So what does all of this prove? Well, it strongly suggests that managerial changes at Valley Parade have made little difference to the club’s initial trajectory. It does not have the magic wand effect in transforming City’s fortunes, at least not overnight.

It’s easy to think that McCall’s removal will suddenly have the players producing better results and performances. Just as it was easy to think that Bowyer’s departure would rescue fading play off hopes last season. Or that Hopkin falling on his sword in 2018/19 was going to rescue the club from relegation.

In the last decade, only Phil Parkinson has managed to improve on what his predecessor had achieved at Valley Parade. But even he only picked up 23 points from his first 20 league games, boosting the points-per-game average from Peter Jackson’s ending by 0.2. It takes time. And Parkinson only brought success after some dark and difficult moments. Ditto Paul Jewell. 

That’s why the hunt for McCall’s replacement needs to be about long-term planning as much as it is improving the form guide. Our modern history suggests that City are not going to suddenly start winning lots of games of football in the short-term just because someone else is picking the team (let’s hope this gloomy forecast looks hopelessly wrong in a few weeks time!)

The aims that McCall was judged to be failing to achieve – rebuilding a weak squad, competing at the top end of League Two – have not changed. Bradford City cannot go on losing, but they also cannot keep hoping that when a manager departs they’ll stumble upon the next Chris Kamara.  

Categories: Opinion

Tags: BCAFC