Royle vs Keegan
It's been a relatively quiet couple of days news wise following the West Ham, with only Beanie the horse managing to keep the press occupied since the 'Pearce out' headlines seem to be yesterday fish and chip wrapping.
Looking round the excellent mcfcstats site, I came across an interesting comparison between two of our most recent managers - Kevin Keegan and Joe Royle.
'King Kev' - the great entertainer, champion of gung-hu, attacking football and 'Big Joe' - famed for the dogs of war and grinding out results. I assumed that Keegan's record would be far superior - having had the superb promotion season and continuous Premiership campaigns wheras Royle endured a more topsy-turvy time in charge - experiencing two relegations and two promotions during his time in charge.
As a comparison though, their records are surprisingly identical and definitely worth looking at:
Games in charge:
Royle 145, Keegan 151.
Wins:
Royle 61, Keegan 64.
Draws:
Royle 40, Keegan 35.
Losses:
Royle 44, Keegan 52.
Goals for:
Royle 211, Keegan 244.
Goals against:
Royle 160, Keegan 192.
Win %:
Royle 42.1, Keegan 42.4
Obviously there are differences worth looking at - noticeably that the majority of Keegans games were in The Premiership whereas Royle had a lone season at the top level, but Keegan had a far better squad and financial resources at his disposal, but the similarities in the wins was surprising and I expected Royle to have suffered more defeats than Keegan following two relegations and a (in the main) stuttering promotion from Division 2.
Keegan, unsurprisingly has the edge in goals scored and living up to his reputation endured more goals against.
Both had decent win percentages as well - comparing favourably with Peter Reid over the past couple of decades, but neither was the manager with the best win record during the past twenty year.
Who was it?
This guy.
5 comments:
Interesting, but are you sure about those stats? They don't quite seem to add up.
Yes, Joe was the sort of manager who if we lost the first game of the season and hadn't scored by half time of the second game would announce that from then on in we would be playing dogs of war football. Very often his sides did pass the ball though, and pass it well and with a certain efficiency, if without the glimpses of something more that players like Berkovic and Benarbia would show. When you look at the midfield that he was able to put out the season before Keegan took over it says a lot about him that he came as close as he did to keeping us up. If he had a clear weakness as a manager it was that he couldn't attract better players to the club, he couldn't spend money even when it was there to spend.
Without going off to look at the stats, Ill bet it was Brian Horton...?
Anonymous - you're quite correct. Now adjusted.
Royle did a very good job yanking out the skeletons in the closet. I don't remember exactly how many players he booted, but it was probably more than two first team lineups. During his time in charge he managed to get back to back promotions, which I guess is partly the reason for his good record. He also did attract some good players like George Weah, Paolo Wanchope, Richard Dunne, and the immaculate Shaun Goater. But he will forever be remembered as the Manager who had to clear out all the deadwood - a job he did tremendously well. All in all I guess he was not as successful as Keegan because he did not manage to keep us in the Premiership. And the dispute following his sacking is a sad testimony for one of our best Managers in recent years.
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