An interesting look at Pearson vs Sven at LCFC

[DanTheMan]

In the past few weeks, as speculation over Pearson returning grew, there was much discussion made over his previous tenure at City, in terms of his win percentage - apparently a best-ever for the club according to Wikipedia!

As many rightly identified however, half of his games were played in League One where we were routinely outclassing opposition on a whole, and his overall win percentage is definitely a misleading statistic. I may be wrong, but I don't think anybody ever made a comment on Pearson vs Sven in the Championship, factoring out the L1 games for Pearson to get a like-for-like comparison.

I am not one to believe in the stats above all else, at the expense of other factors, but I did expect that the difference would still be more apparent despite factoring out Pearson's amazing 08/09 season. What I actually found was very interesting and shows, in the Championship at least, it is very hard to tell them apart. The graph below is W/D/L percentages for Championship league games only, as well as an average season's points tally if both managers were to repeat their performance over a season.

Again, as a closing remark, I will reiterate that I know the stats aren't everything, and I do believe Pearson is much more the type of manager we need as a team in the Championship - he can man-manage well (which is something Sven suffered a lack of IMHO for both us and England), he made us a team with a bit of grit and the ability to grind out results when we were having a poor game. It is just interesting that there is much, much less between them than I thought there was in terms of their league performance!

EDIT: I am aware that this still isn't a fair comparison because of Sven's increased resources compared to Pearson, I left out my opinions as much as possible to open a discussion - but I was basically getting at the fact that precisely this difference over funding/quality of players shows that Pearson should in theory be able to do even better, since Sven could essentially only match his performance, despite the different class of players available

[marko]

Don't forget the resources Sven had.

Pearson had nowhere near the money to spend in the 09/10 season, so it's not a true comparison.

[flowwolf]

There are lies damn lies and statistics. :thumbup:

[MikeyT]

Don't forget the resources Sven had.

Pearson had nowhere near the money to spend in the 09/10 season, so it's not a true comparison.

Exactly this.

[DanTheMan]

Don't forget the resources Sven had.

Pearson had nowhere near the money to spend in the 09/10 season, so it's not a true comparison.

This is pretty much my point - Sven had money to spend, and we now have a much better quality squad on paper than we did in 09/10, and yet he could only muster a similar performance to Pearson in the Championship with less resources. Obviously the only true comparison would be to have had them both use the same squad, playing the same teams - I was just trying to make previous comparisons between their performances fairer This bodes well as Pearson now has access to our best squad in many years and money in January to add wingers etc, so hopefully he can do even better than last time!

[SMX11]

Sven only won 9 out of the last 27 games

[Bayfox]

As many rightly identified however, half of his games were played in League One where we were routinely outclassing opposition on a whole, and his overall win percentage is definitely a misleading statistic

I know this isn't your point, however can we please stop bringing it up, F-Word, Leeds, Southampton, Sheff Weds, Charlton etc have all been in L1 and took at least 2 seasons to get back. Nige did it at the 1st attempt and thats all that matters.

[cc_star]

Interesting, but without context means nothing

Did Pearson have up to £20(*edit* million, yes most deffo million) to spend on transfers, wages and fees?

[DanTheMan]

Interesting, but without context means nothing

Did Pearson have up to £20(*edit* million, yes most deffo million) to spend on transfers, wages and fees?

See my previous reply - I wasn't defending Sven or trying to say "oh look, Pearson isn't a positive change because he's no better than Sven!" Just simply opening a discussion based on a MORE fair comparison of match performance based on games in the same league

[monsieur grande]

who the hell did a graph for this

[DanTheMan]

who the hell did a graph for this

Haha - I did! As I said, I was interested in doing a fairer comparison without the Pearson L1 season results included - about 10 mins of effort, not like I was compiling "Of Fossils and Foxes"

[ithuriel]

Peeps go on about league one but Pearson had to make a succesful team out of a relegated mess and with selling off those few player's that other teams actually wanted.

He then had to do what other team's such as Leeds had failed to do and get promoted straight away before the rot really set in and he had very little to spend after the previous season's splurges.

Once he accomplished this oh so simple feat he then got us into the play offs whilst actually have a little bit of cash to spend and when he was quietly pushed from the club by Mandaric, (who could not sack him but had that itchy feeling in his trigger finger again,) he left us with a team that peeps thought was manned by top quality player's like Weale.

I have not had this kind of feeling about a manager since the days of Little and O'niell and i am so glad he is back since he should never have been pushed in the first place

PS, i liked Sven but after his initial spurt up the table whilst C.Powell was here we started to stumble and never really got going, maybe letting Chrissy go was his one big mistake

[monsieur grande]

Haha - I did! As I said, I was interested in doing a fairer comparison without the Pearson L1 season results included - about 10 mins of effort, not like I was compiling "Of Fossils and Foxes"

erikson had the unfair advantage of Yakubu

[ibbosuk]

This is pretty much my point - Sven had money to spend, and we now have a much better quality squad on paper than we did in 09/10, and yet he could only muster a similar performance to Pearson in the Championship with less resources. Obviously the only true comparison would be to have had them both use the same squad, playing the same teams - I was just trying to make previous comparisons between their performances fairer This bodes well as Pearson now has access to our best squad in many years and money in January to add wingers etc, so hopefully he can do even better than last time!

Its like asking who is the best Formula 1 racing driver given the different resources, new innovations, its impossible to say.

[Mjlewis08]

It would be interesting in 13 games time to see what Pearson's win % is to Svens 13 games. You then SHOULD (in theory) be able to compare what Nige can do with the same squad. Apples with Apples and all that jazz.

[hackneyfox]

Sven didn't have as long with 'his' team though did he?

He probably wouldn't have gone for last years loan players had the owners not wanted him to go for promotion.

NFP had a whole season with a team he had created the season before that had a winning mentality.

Sven started with a squad that wasn't his and had a losing mentality.

He was given money to spend during the close season, it is only this season that he should be judged on and he wasn't given much time.

[ithuriel]

It would be interesting in 13 games time to see what Pearson's win % is to Svens 13 games. You then SHOULD (in theory) be able to compare what Nige can do with the same squad. Apples with Apples and all that jazz.

You mean the squad Sven brought over the course of the summer and had a nice preseason with from player's that he picked that's not including Sven's iceman of course

[Head Honcho]

In the past few weeks, as speculation over Pearson returning grew, there was much discussion made over his previous tenure at City, in terms of his win percentage - apparently a best-ever for the club according to Wikipedia!

As many rightly identified however, half of his games were played in League One where we were routinely outclassing opposition on a whole, and his overall win percentage is definitely a misleading statistic. I may be wrong, but I don't think anybody ever made a comment on Pearson vs Sven in the Championship, factoring out the L1 games for Pearson to get a like-for-like comparison.

I am not one to believe in the stats above all else, at the expense of other factors, but I did expect that the difference would still be more apparent despite factoring out Pearson's amazing 08/09 season. What I actually found was very interesting and shows, in the Championship at least, it is very hard to tell them apart. The graph below is W/D/L percentages for Championship league games only, as well as an average season's points tally if both managers were to repeat their performance over a season.

Again, as a closing remark, I will reiterate that I know the stats aren't everything, and I do believe Pearson is much more the type of manager we need as a team in the Championship - he can man-manage well (which is something Sven suffered a lack of IMHO for both us and England), he made us a team with a bit of grit and the ability to grind out results when we were having a poor game. It is just interesting that there is much, much less between them than I thought there was in terms of their league performance!

EDIT: I am aware that this still isn't a fair comparison because of Sven's increased resources compared to Pearson, I left out my opinions as much as possible to open a discussion - but I was basically getting at the fact that precisely this difference over funding/quality of players shows that Pearson should in theory be able to do even better, since Sven could essentially only match his performance, despite the different class of players available

I could have sworn you mentioned the word "interesting " in the title somewhere

[davieG]

Sven had to drag his team up from the bottom of the league where as Pearson had the momentum, knowledge of the team and therefore the team ethics embedded from his successful run in L1

Conversely as others have said Sven had the resources.

Perhaps the two cancelled each other out.

[Corky]

In the past few weeks, as speculation over Pearson returning grew, there was much discussion made over his previous tenure at City, in terms of his win percentage - apparently a best-ever for the club according to Wikipedia!

As many rightly identified however, half of his games were played in League One where we were routinely outclassing opposition on a whole, and his overall win percentage is definitely a misleading statistic. I may be wrong, but I don't think anybody ever made a comment on Pearson vs Sven in the Championship, factoring out the L1 games for Pearson to get a like-for-like comparison.

Outclassing teams? With our turgid, functional football that settled for 1-0 wins and 0-0's away?

[Bayfox]

Outclassing teams? With our turgid, functional football that settled for 1-0 wins and 0-0's away?

Am i not right in thinking we were amoungst the top scores in the country that season? MK dons 2-0 and 2-2, Tranmere 3-1, 8 goals in 2 games against cheltenham, 3-0 and 3-1 against orient, 3-2 and 4-1 with huddersfield, 4 at home against the posh, 3-0 v southend and crewe, 3-1 away at hereford.

I'm not sure we had to many 1-0 or 0-0 that season, admitted the football might not have been the best, but can you expect to play pretty football at carlise in dec or at herefords ground, not really and lets be honest svens way of playing isn't much better. No width, no plan B.

[Corky]

Am i not right in thinking we were amoungst the top scores in the country that season? MK dons 2-0 and 2-2, Tranmere 3-1, 8 goals in 2 games against cheltenham, 3-0 and 3-1 against orient, 3-2 and 4-1 with huddersfield, 4 at home against the posh, 3-0 v southend and crewe, 3-1 away at hereford.

I'm not sure we had to many 1-0 or 0-0 that season, admitted the football might not have been the best, but can you expect to play pretty football at carlise in dec or at herefords ground, not really and lets be honest svens way of playing isn't much better. No width, no plan B.

You're right, we were the top scorers in the country that year. 84 goals, double what we scored the previous season. Even in the Championship the next season we had five matches where we won by three goals or more, and scored two in several matches.

My comment was sarcastic in any case, because I never felt the football was that bad. Sure there were some poor performances and dull matches, but they were outnumbered by good ones.

[Thracian]

Outclassing teams? With our turgid, functional football that settled for 1-0 wins and 0-0's away?

Yes, I did smile about that. But at least those stats paint a more credible representation of the reality than those which include Pearson's Divison One results, credible though the outcome was.

My opinion is that both have talents but are over-rated as managers. However the question now is whether Pearson can take an honest and analytical look at his own past performance (while wallowing in waves of exagerrated flattery) and improve on what he's sometimes done badly before.

Trouble is there's such easy reward in football even for failure that managers have little need to soul search too much. With Sven's £1m pay-off for achieving next to nothing - and another sabbatical of however many weeks as a result - there's a golden lining to even the cloudiest days.

For Pearson though, this stage of his career is critical if he ever wants to compete for the best jobs and more particularly because, at Leicester and in the current circumstances, he'll have all the support and backing he needs to do well.

There will be no excuses. If he wants wingers he can have them. If he wants a striker the owners will get him one. What will matter is how he puts the whole exercise together to make it work - in other words how he attends to the details.

I expect to see a faster, more balanced team, better coaching, specialists capable of delivering the basics like corners and free-kicks, people who find ways to disrupt organised defences, a high level of fitness, no passengers, no-one who cannot control or pass a ball and a real attitude to winning and sustaining a committed level of performance whether home or away.

None of those things require a magic wand. They're the least we should have been able to expect since the days of MON because they are core requirements for any respectable football team let alone one that's intent on challenging for promotion.

If we get those things Sven will rapidly sink into the annals of our history as the footnote he barely deserves. And Pearson will accumulate the results he needs to stand alongside MON and, perhaps, if he has the will, to prove that we can go even higher.

[nuttytimmy]

It makes for very interesting reading. I've compiled an editorial based on Dan's graph and cheekily included all of his text too.

[Thracian]

Am i not right in thinking we were amoungst the top scores in the country that season? MK dons 2-0 and 2-2, Tranmere 3-1, 8 goals in 2 games against cheltenham, 3-0 and 3-1 against orient, 3-2 and 4-1 with huddersfield, 4 at home against the posh, 3-0 v southend and crewe, 3-1 away at hereford.

I'm not sure we had to many 1-0 or 0-0 that season, admitted the football might not have been the best, but can you expect to play pretty football at carlise in dec or at herefords ground, not really and lets be honest svens way of playing isn't much better. No width, no plan B.

We were awful, and almost totally defensive against MK Dons away and you make no mention of the wretched performance in the away game at Tranmere when it is hard to recall us having a shot. It was never a doubt we'd score goals in Division One but far too often we looked cautious rather than convincing.

The following season our unambitious approach to away games cost us dearly and was inexplicable given there were three points for a win. In 23 games we scored 21 goals, fewer than one a game and, not surprisingly. we failed to wn 15 of those 23 matches.

The problem was apparent as early as our first away game at Ipswich where a complete lack of ambition against a woefully disjointed Ipswich left us returning home 0-0 from a game we should have won at a canter.