Were Rangers right to let Le Guen go? Perhaps…

Paul Le Guen is the latest managerial casualty. Were Rangers right to let him go?

It’s difficult, especially in Scotland, to decide whether a team is really declining under a manager, or whether a sequence of poor results is just a ‘blip’ in form. Scotland is usually even more difficult, because Rangers and Celtic are historically much stronger than other league teams (though that’s changed recently).

So I had a look at the European rankings given by our model for Scottish clubs in May 2006, when Le Guen was hired, and on New Year’s day, just before he was fired. Here are the results:

May 2006:

• Rangers ranked 2nd in Scotland and 53rd in Europe
• Attack is 60% of best team in Europe (Barcelona)
• Defence is 55% of best team in Europe (Barcelona)
• Rangers are 79% as good as Celtic, who rank 26th in Europe
• Hearts are catching up – they are 74% as good as Celtic

31st December 2006:

• Rangers ranked 2nd in Scotland and 86th in Europe
• Attack is 51% of best team in Europe (Barcelona)
• Defence is 48% of best team in Europe (Barcelona)
• Rangers are 74% as good as Celtic, who rank 43rd in Europe
• Hearts are 4th – they are 57% as good as Celtic. Aberdeen now ranked 3rd in Scotland

So Rangers rankings have gone down a bit. Celtic don’t have such a good Euro ranking this year either. But Rangers are about as far behind Celtic (in our model’s opinion rather than in League results) this year as they were last year.

Last year, Rangers only had Celtic and Hearts to compete with. This year, Aberdeen and Hibs are at about the same level as Hearts.

So there is some evidence that Le Guen has done a bad job, but it’s far from conclusive. At least there was a demonstrable decline in Rangers’ rankings though. I did some work on clubs sacking managers last year, and it was a painful piece of work, and it was difficult to come to any firm conclusions.

Sometimes, teams had declined before a manager was sacked. That wasn’t the case for many managers, though. My guess is that short term (less than 10 games) blips in form result in upset fans, and calls for the manager’s head. The directors duly comply… Rash decisions and short-termism seems to be behind a lot of manager sackings.

Oh well. C’est la vie, as Paul might say.

Advertisement