How Tim used the media to justify his bad decisions

Specifically I’m referring to one statistic: best win rate of any Premier League Tottenham manager. Now that’s quite a statistic, and in the right context can certainly be used to ward off any naysayers or haters. After all, who are we to judge his methods? How can we have an objective view on his tenure as Spurs’ boss? The stats don’t lie – he was the best.

Except that he was also the worst. Let me explain.

The tricky thing about statistics is that there are two things going on, and those two things are not always in agreement. One of the things is the statistic itself, and the other is the interpretation or explanation of the statistic. The objective is to have these two things in alignment, so that you can learn something about what you are investigating. Let’s take an example:

countries

So here we have the population of the top 5 countries. We see China with 1.36bn and India with 1.24bn. So from that statistic we can conclude that China has more people living in it than India. That’s pretty clear and simple. Terms like ‘more’ are easy to interpret, and it is clear to everyone what that means.

But this can also be boring. Nobody buys a paper or clicks a link to read something that makes sense. The headline “Tim sacked after results are no better than AVB” isn’t nearly as interesting as “Tim sacked despite having the best record”. After all I have done the same thing in the headline for this article.

So how can Tim be the best and the worst? It all depends what you mean by best and worst, and how you look at the data. Let’s start with the best:

Premier League Win Rate

Manager              Played   Won      Win%

Sherwood            22           13           59.1%

Villas-Boas          54           29           53.7%

Redknapp            144        71           49.3%

Ramos                  35           10           28.6%

Jol                         114        47           41.2%

On that basis he has the highest win rate for Premier League games. But what about Cup games? After all the term ‘Premier League Manager’ doesn’t necessarily just mean for games played in the Premier League. It could just mean a manager that has a team that is in the Premier League.

All Games Win Rate

Manager              Played   Won      Win%

Sherwood            28           14           50.0%

Villas-Boas          80           44           55.0%

Redknapp            198        98           49.5%

Ramos                  54           21           38.9%

Jol                         149        67           45.0%

Now Sherwood is behind AVB, and pretty much on par with Redknapp. That’s not looking so good as a headline. But of course there are not just wins to consider. Draws can also get you vital points, and avoiding defeats to rivals can keep you in the hunt against them. So not losing games is important as well.

All Games Loss Rate

Manager              Played   Lost       Loss%

Sherwood            28           10           35.7%

Villas-Boas          80           16           20.0%

Redknapp            198        50           25.3%

Ramos                  54           17           31.4%

Jol                         149        44           29.5%

On losses Tim has the worst record of the last 5 managers. Even the calamitous Ramos lost fewer games than Tim as a percentage of total played. How is “Tim sacked for having a worse record than Ramos” sounding as a title?

So was he the best or was he the worst? Beats me. Probably neither. The fact is that Tim had very few draws (just 4 in 28 games), so I would expect that both the win rate and the loss rate have been pushed up because of this.

So I’m not saying that Tim did an especially bad job during his time. However you can doubt the wisdom to publically criticise your players. Even if you are correct in what you are saying it is probably not the right thing to do to say it. After all, if being honest doesn’t get you the results then it is not a good line to pursue. But the point is that by using that one particular interpretation of one particular view of his record he did seek to justify all that he had done. He is saying that you cannot criticise his methods because he was the best manager that Spurs have had.

So did he use the media, and were his decisions bad? Well, that’s just one interpretation.

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