Jonny Foreigner Knows A Thing Or Two After All
As England have made a swift exit from the 2014 World Cup finals, and inspired by this Paul Tomkins tweet, I thought I'd update this article and move it back to the homepage. The figures go up to and include the 0-0 draw with Costa Rica.
Whilst looking at the stats of England's recent managers on Wikipedia, I noticed that the two non-Englishmen (Sven Goran Eriksson and Fabio Capello) had managed far more games than any of their home grown counterparts since Bobby Robson.
It turns out that since the beginning of the Terry Venables era in 1994, Englishmen and non-Englishmen have managed an almost identical number of England matches. Straight away that fact tells you a lot about the relative success of the two groups, based on the lengths of the tenures; two managers from overseas have roughly equalled five homegrown gaffers.
As the table below shows, the number of games is where the similarities end.
Since 1994, England have won 1.93 points per game in total; 2.10 when managed by a foreigner, 1.78 when managed by an English man.
This equates to a seventy-four point season overall, with an eighty point campaign for the combined efforts of Sven and Fabio, and just sixty-eight for the English.
If Greg Dyke is still serious about England competing in the business end of tournaments within the next ten years or so, then maybe it's not the players that are the main issue. Would you stick with a man demonstrating this trend? I know I wouldn't.
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