After a disappointing Carling Cup campaign last season which saw the “B” team defeated on penalties by Northampton, Liverpool start this season’s campaign at an earlier stage due to last season’s failure to qualify for European competition. Will this be the opportunity to utilise the squad to its fullest? And how have Liverpool performed against Exeter in the past?

Liverpool and Exeter City have met on only four occasions in their history, all in cup competitions – the teams have never met in the league as the Grecians’ best finishing position was 8^th place in the old Third Division in 1979-80.

The first match-up came in January 1950 in the fourth round of the FA Cup. Liverpool entered the game in first place in the first division and had high hopes of a league and cup double, having been deprived of the feat three years previously at the semi final stage of the FA Cup. Exeter by comparison were in the regional Third Division South. Liverpool had gone top the previous week with a 2-0 victory over Birmingham and so were confidently expected to defeat the Devonians comfortably.

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In this piece, Graeme Riley looks at the effect changing manager has had on top division teams since the Premier League was formed, working from Hull City through to Wolves, and obviously including Liverpool in between.

To help distinguish between those managers who were given the summer to sweep the decks clean and those who had to work with what they inherited, I’ve added some notes to the manager summaries: S= manager was replaced during the season; C= manager was replaced in the close season; R: manager replaced a caretaker manager (less than ten games in charge). This will also be used in the summary at the end of the series when we can look at various other performance measures.

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“He’s fat, he’s round, he bounces on the ground, Sammy Lee, Sammy Lee…”

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]]> http://tomkinstimes.com/2011/03/do-new-managers-experience-a-bounce-final-part/feed/ 31 http://tomkinstimes.com/2011/03/a-european-hangover-lfcs-record-after-euro-games/ http://tomkinstimes.com/2011/03/a-european-hangover-lfcs-record-after-euro-games/#comments Thu, 10 Mar 2011 11:33:44 +0000 Graeme Riley http://tomkinstimes.com/?p=9728

One of the following statements is true – can you guess which one?

a) Liverpool’s record in matches after a European game is much worse than in fixtures when they have not just played in Europe.

b) Results of matches after European games were worst in the 1990s.

c) Liverpool perform better in homes games after European games than in away games.

d) Liverpool have only lost one game on neutral territory after playing a European fixture.

A frequent complaint amongst fans is that Liverpool don’t play well after European fixtures, but does this belief actually hold water? In order to assess this, it was necessary to establish some ground rules. The most important of these is that only those games (regardless of which competition) that took place within 5 days of the European match were considered. So for example, a match after a European final would typically be in the following season, so it would be unreasonable to include this in the analysis since a totally different team could be fielded.

Similarly, matches taking place 6 days later will put less pressure on squad resources, they are effectively in the following week, and so I have discounted these as well. Contrast this with the match against Stoke in April 1966, which took place just 2 days after the away leg of the European Cup Winners’ Cup semi-final against Celtic.

In order to make the analysis more meaningful, I’ve broken the data down into three distinct periods – pre-Heysel, 1991-2001 (ie pre Champions League involvement) and post 2001, when most of the Champions League involvement has occurred. The results are somewhat unexpected.

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The Europa League roller coaster moves on, and the next stop is Portugal. With only 16 clubs left, the serious business is now getting under way, so do Liverpool have the wherewithal to get past their latest opponents, Sporting Clube de Braga?

Nestled in the north-west of the country, Braga, with a population of 175,000 is the oldest city in Portugal. The football club was formed in 1921 and owes its name to the club from the capital, Sporting Clube de Portugal. The club’s colours were originally green, but following a trip to London, the club president decided to change their kit to the same as Arsenal, which they still wear to this day. This is a remarkable coincidence, since AC Sparta Praha, our opponents in the last round, had also designed their kit around the Gunners’ strip.

History

League football developed more slowly in Portugal than in most countries; the main tournament was the Portuguese Cup until 1938, although an unofficial league had been in operation since 1934. Braga were placed in the regional second division Minho in 1938, but finished in the bottom 3 in a league of just 6 teams in each of the first three seasons. When the league was restructured, in 1941, Braga dropped to the next level. A further restructuring the following season saw Braga win their section and enter the play-offs along with 16 other hopefuls. Although they could not achieve promotion, they did manage a creditable semi final place.

In the second part of the series, Graeme Riley looks at how all Premier League clubs have performed (1992-present day) after appointing a new manager. This section looks at Charlton to Fulham, with additional information added for Arsenal-Burnley.

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By Graeme Riley. After the long winter hibernation, the Europa League commences again with the round of 32. The teams who have reached this stage have either progressed through the group stage (24 teams) or were relegated from the Champions League (8 teams) as they could only finish third in their respective group.

Liverpool have been drawn against Sparta Prague, a team who we have never met before in European competition and indeed we have only once before met a team from the same country – Slovan Liberec in the UEFA Cup Second Round in late 2000. Could this be a good sign, since Liverpool went on to win that competition, and qualify for the Champions League in a storming finish to the league season?

Club formation and history

Sparta were founded in November 1893, making them one of the oldest clubs in Central Europe. Football was a strange affair; a game consisted of 3 thirds and the first team to score 3 goals was declared the winner, so even a 2-0 result was classed as a drawn match.

In the first Bohemian (Czechoslovakia was not created until the end of the First World War) championship which took place in 1896, only 4 teams took part. In the second match of the series Sparta defeated perennial rivals Slavia, only for the referee to disallow the sole goal of the game after the game had finished. Sparta pulled out of the competition in protest.

The club originally played in black and white stripes, but changed this to same colours as Arsenal – redcurrant – following a visit to London by the club president in 1906.

Sparta won the first of their 24 Czechoslovak titles in 1912, and their first cup win was in 1909. They have enjoyed two particularly successful periods; during the 1930s they won 4 league titles and provided the majority of the national team together with arch-rivals Slavia. The second period was the late 1980s and early 1990s, when they won 8 of the last 10 championships before the break up of the country into the separate states of Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

After the split, Sparta dominated Czech football like never before, winning 11 of the 17 titles to date.

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By Graeme Riley. Or to put it more eloquently, does the appointment of a new manager improve the short term fortunes of a club?

Since the appointment of Kenny Dalglish as manger of Liverpool in early 2011, there has been much speculation as to whether a new appointment does indeed give a club a lift, even if only for a brief period; obviously every situation is unique, but one the whole, is it true to expect a ‘bounce’? With the TPI database completed up to and including January, there is now the opportunity to analyse this data to see if manager changes have had a significant effect on a club’s fortunes.

The ground rules are as follows: for each appointment since the start of the Premier League in 1992, the record of each manager’s first ten games in charge is compared with the record of the previous manager’s last 10 games. Any manager in charge for less than 10 games is deemed to be a caretaker, even if he was originally appointed in a permanent role.

Why 10 games? Firstly it is necessary to give a manager a reasonable settling-in period; as per Roy Hodgson’s infamous quote at the start of the 2010-11 season, “Judge me after 10 games”. Any less than this and there is an increased risk of drawing incorrect conclusions due to the vagaries of the fixture list. It would be unfair to compare a manager playing Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea, Spurs and Manchester City in his 10 games with a manager facing Hull, Burnley, Watford, Charlton and Swindon (I know, I know, they were never in the league at the same time, but you get my point).

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Perhaps given Liverpool’s recent results, Dutch courage is something Roy Hodgson may need before tackling FC Utrecht. However his record in Europe, both with Fulham and Liverpool has been excellent, so does he have anything to fear?

Liverpool have met Dutch opposition 6 times in European competition, half of these occurrences being against PSV Eindhoven in relatively recent years.

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By Graeme Riley

One of the remarkable things about the Premier League so far this season is its unpredictability. Chelsea, long time leaders, have already lost as many games as Birmingham and Fulham, both of whom are stranded in the lower reaches of the league. With 4 defeats in 15 games, they are only 2 short of the total of losses in their entire title winning season of 2009-10. Unbeaten Manchester United find themselves only 2 points clear, with a current points tally which, if extrapolated over the entire season, would see them reach only 79 points, one of the lowest for a title winning team in the Premier League era.

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A version of this post, minus the additional exclusive Liverpool FC analysis, can be read here.

Below is a full record of Roy Hodgson’s managerial career at club level, based on league results only.

What’s noticeable is that it took him 12 years to manage a club for more than 26 league games; mostly due to smaller Scandinavian leagues, and also due to only lasting 21 games at Bristol City.

In England he has managed for 181 games, winning just 57 – at 31.5%. Liverpool should be aiming for 50-60%, with 60% necessary for the top four and 66%+ for the title.

In Italy, he managed for 79 league games, winning 34, at 43%.

In England and Italy, at clubs who were big and/or rich (therefore excluding Bristol City, Udinese and Fulham), his record is well below average. Winning just 51 out of 131 games with these clubs gives him a worse win% than Graeme Souness had at Liverpool; yes, that bad.

Even including all his successes in small Nordic leagues, Hodgson’s entire career win rate of 43.3% suggests a manager who just isn’t ambitious enough in his approach. He’ll make smaller teams hard to beat, but he won’t make bigger teams become winners. Hodgson was the right man for Fulham, but based on his record and performance to date, the wrong one for Liverpool.

Key: Red shade = England an green shade = Italy.

Statistics provided by Graeme Riley, who provides further assessment below for Subscribers only.