Why Steve Coppell should be Manager of the Year

[superdave]

Here in the US, too often, the Manager of the Year award is really the "boy, you guys sure were better than we writers predicted" award. Which means it often goes to a manager who had players have unexpectedly good years. IOW, it's a luck award.

In the Prem, it seems to be a reiteration of the league table.

But I think when voting on this award, the focus should be, what decisions did the manager make that worked and elevated his team? For an example from last year, the decision by Mark Hughes to bring in Bellamy and count on him for goals and to bet the front line on Bellamy not being a problem for Rovers was a risky decision that worked extremely well.

I suppose the leading candidates are Coppell and Ferguson. I think to an extent, Ferguson benefitted from Scholes having a comeback-ish year, and from CRonaldo bursting onto the scene as an elite player. (He also "benefitted" from Terry's injury and Chelsea deciding to play as many central midfielders at the same time as possible, and Sheva's disappointing season.) But outside of playing more attacking football than he has in recent years (and with Scholes playing like he was, I don't think that was really a difficult choice), what decisions did Ferguson make that helped ManU? I think the main thing he deserves credit for is preparing the team mentally to get off to a good start. That enabled them to put pressure on Chelsea, and be there when Chelsea wobbled. But beyond that?

Now let's look at Steve Coppell. He made two "meta" decisions, and both worked out about as well as they possibly could have. First, he didn't do what 90% of mediocrities do, which is not trust in his own judgment, but instead bring in a number of "proven" Prem mediocrities for veteran leadership. Somehow, I don't think Paul Dickov would have improved Reading. Coppell looked over his roster and decided the guys he had were good enough, despite no serious experience at the Prem level. And his early buy in to the club was a CCC player, Seol, who contributed depth and had his moments. In other words, Coppell showed tremendous judgment and tremendous balls when he assessed his roster.

The other "season" decision he made was to be aggressive. Sure, when Reading, aka Arsenal Lite, played the real Arsenal, it failed. But overall, he assessed that his team could continue to play attacking football in the Prem as they had in the Championship. They were going to go for wins and absorb the losses, rather than grind out draw after draw after draw. Again, it's hard to see how that decision could have worked out any better.

Other plusses for Coppell:

He handled the Sidwell "will he stay or will he go" distraction adroitly.
He handled the Hunt vs. Chelsea keepers distraction well enough that the team wasn't affected.
He lost his best striker and best central defender to injuries, and yet, the team kept plugging along. Compare that to how Watford utterly collapsed when King got hurt. (I know, Watford's chances of staying up were never as good, just making the point. Or look at what happened to Chelsea when Terry got hurt.)
His teams attacked and defended with terrific togetherness, such that a casual observer of matches might have thought Reading were playing a man up.

I think Coppell's decisions did more to elevate his team than was the case for any other manager.

[dredgfan]

If manager of the year goes to anyone else its a farce. Your reasoning says all that needs to be said.

[fernb8]

good post. I suppose Coppell will really be rated next season, when things will be much more difficult.

A quick mention for David Moyes, who did an excellent job at Everton this season.

[Matt Clark]

Coppell's done very well. But if Jewell didn't get it last year, what on earth makes you think Coppell will get it this year?

[sendorange]

Coppell's done very well. But if Jewell didn't get it last year, what on earth makes you think Coppell will get it this year?
And Pardew who got an FA cup final as well as the top 10 finish.

Coppell has had a good season but nothing that hasn't been done before.

[Cadillac Kid]

Coppell's done very well. But if Jewell didn't get it last year, what on earth makes you think Coppell will get it this year?

Exactly. Coppell is a great manager and so is Jewell but premiership consistency is what it is all about. Wigan finished up there last year and this year they may get the drop.
So, if Coppell can repeat next year, then I would give it to him.

[Matt Clark]

Burley at Ipswich, Jewell at Bradford, Megson at the Albion, Allardyce at Bolton, O'Neill at Leicester, it's pretty run of the mill. It's still more impressive than doing well with a top-four club, but it's hardly revelutionary.

[j.fisher]

Coppell is honestly the only manager I've really even considered getting the award.

[superdave]

1. I'm not arguing that he WILL get it but that he SHOULD.
2. If it's about year in, year out consistency, why is it called "manager of the year?" If he doesn't make good decisions next year, I'm sure he'll pay the price.

And if it's about which manager makes good decisions year in, year out, Sparky's the winner then.

[Matt Clark]

Of course he should get it. Of course he won't. In fact, Burley is the only manager in the history of the Premier League to win the thing without also bagging the title. It might be nice to assume that this precedent will see Coppell recognised, but it won't. He might win the LMA version of the award, which tends to be more fairminded, but even that is more unlikely than not.

[Gliding7]

i agree with the author. I mean, the Manager of the YEAR should mean the best manager in 2007 right? so what has it to do whether Coppell will repeat a good job or not next season?

i believe the Manager of the Year should go to the manager who spent the less while achieving the most.

otherwise if it only go to those who win trophies, then it'll forever be the manager among the "big 4".

afterall, personally i think it's much difficult to lead a newly promoted side to a top half of table finish while playing good football, than having a squad full of international stars to win the league trophy.

[superdave]

Of course he should get it.
In that case, I'm truly puzzled what the rest of your verbiage is doing in a thread entitled, Why Steve Coppell should be Manager of the Year.

Shouldn't you just write "agreed" and then stop arguing with me, since you agree with me? I'm sorry I didn't ask for the Matt Clark seal of approval, but with all due respect to your unparalleled ability to be snarky, condescending, and yet pointless, ******** off.

[Matt Clark]

I wasn't aware of arguing with you - I agree with the fact that Stevie Coppell should be MOTY, I was merely pointing out that a) he won't be, because b) there's a lot of precedent for similar achievements, but precious little for it being recognised in this manner.

And finally, I just said that maybe he will get the LMA version of the award instead, as that has a history of being rather more fairminded than the Premier League equivalent.

Threads composed of a single full post and then lots of little ones reading either "Agree" or "Disagree" would not improve Bigsoccer, I posit.

[superdave]

I get that...and further, I thank you for not responding in kind to my over-the-top response. (Note to self: let the coffee work before engaging Matt.)

I started this thread for three reasons. The oblique reason was, I wanted to see if I actually understand how this voting goes in England, and it seems that I did. It's just a "hey, who won the league?" vote, which is an even stupider system than we have.

Second, I wanted to make the case for Coppell.

Finally, I wanted to see if someone wanted to make the case for, for example, Martin Jol, and see what decisions he'd made beside the obvious one (the so far brilliant acquisition of Berbatov) that have stabilized and elevated Spurs. Or if someone wanted to make the case for Ferguson, tell me more about why ManU won this year when they didn't last year. THAT'S the main topic I thought we'd be discussing. But it seems like the respondents to this thread pretty much agree that Coppell has made alot of strong decisions and deserves the award.

One last point...about Jewell last season. Forgive me my imperfect memory, but didn't Wigan have a good year, injury wise? I think while Coppell deserves alot of credit for not doing the "obvious" and buying Andy Cole or Jon Stead or Keith Gillespie, I think he also deserves alot of credit for the team's ability to fight through the loss for extended periods of 2 of their 3 best players (Kitson and Sonko.) Sonko was outstanding when he played, and Reading adjusted their tactics a bit without him, and Bikey turned out to be a good enough replacement in the rotation. Compare that to Rovers' record with and without Ryan Nelsen. His lost half season is why they're not gonna be in the UEFA Cup. The injury to Kitson just exposed Doyle's talents to the world.

Finally, about Wigan last year...they scored 45 goals; 11 teams scored more, every team ahead of them, and 2 behind them. So I don't see how they played attacking football. Reading will finish anywhere from 7th to 9th (technically, the could finish 6th, but Everton has a 9 goal advantage over the Royals.) Only 6 teams have scored more goals. Wigan had a -7 GD, Reading is at +5. Reading already have 3 more points. Reading is quite a bit stronger this season than Wigan was last year.

I wonder if a disparity between GD and place in the standings mean anything. Here in baseball, the most statistical of sports, if a team scores and allows the same number of runs they (obviously) should be a .500 team. If at the halfway point a team is even in runs scored and runs allowed, and has a bad record, they normally improve, and if they have a good record, they normally do worse. That's because over the long term, runs scored and allowed are a better indicator of team quality than wins and losses, which have an element of luck to them. Teams that have a great record in 1 run games rarely repeat that the next season, so it ain't an intrinsic quality to the team, it's luck.

I wonder if that's true in soccer too. I can think of intuitive reasons why it would be, and why it wouldn't be as well.

[nicephoras]

The best correlation tends to be goal difference and goals conceded. While good sides will generally score goals, it is almost universally the case that the side with the tightest defensive record wins their league.
A preponderance of 1 goal wins isn't as indicative of luck in football as in baseball because the scoring spreads are much lower.

I'm not sure why Coppell should get credit for playing attacking football though.

[superdave]

In and of itself, he shouldn't. It's a results business. What he gets credit for, in my book, is realizing he could continue to play the same style. He didn't try to change his team's style. I seriously doubt that if he had tried to turn his team into a dour, counterattacking team, that they'd be sitting where they are in the table.

[juanca]

Reading has played attractive football this season, i was quite impressed with them.

hopefully they can keep sidwell, but i think he wants to go ride the pine at chelski...

[farnsworthuk]

I read the Coppell posts with great interest. This is my first year as a FSC and Setanta subscriber and thus my first year watching the EPL and so I have all of the enthusiasm of a newbie without any of the wisdom of an old head. That said, Reading quickly became the team that I truly cared about (rather than already knew), beginning perhaps not coincidentally with their come-from-behind win against Middlesbrough the first game of the season. I am thus biased when it comes to the "Manager of the Year" question so I will defer to the wisdom of Sir Alex, who, if my memory is correct, called Coppell the manager of the year after the Man U v Reading FA Cup replay.

[leg_breaker]

Burley at Ipswich, Jewell at Bradford, Megson at the Albion, Allardyce at Bolton, O'Neill at Leicester, it's pretty run of the mill. It's still more impressive than doing well with a top-four club, but it's hardly revelutionary.

And winning yet another league title with one of the richest teams in the world is revolutionary?

[Matt Clark]

********ing hell, you really have got the dumbass urge again tonight, huh? It's like Moron COD.

It's not revolutionary, no. Which is why I didn't say it was. I even said precisely the opposite in the very post you quote. Which is also why, clearly and unequivocally, I've lamented the fact that Coppell will not get the Manager of the Year award because someone (like Ferguson), who's actually done far less to merit the award, will get it.

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