1. Performs well at a “small” club (one that is neither in the Champions League nor has realistic Champions League intentions) thus attracting the attention of bigger clubs.

2. Signs for a “big” club (one that is either in the Champions League or that has realistic Champions League intentions).

3. Despite performing well at the “big” club, he is deemed surplus to requirements.

4. Is sold to a “small” club.

5. Repeat from stage 1.

The “small” teams being Coventry City, Blackburn Rovers, West Ham United and Cardiff City.
The “big” teams are Newcastle United, Liverpool, Manchester City and Liverpool again.

Is this accurate or am I a victim of my brain’s eagerness to look for oversimplified patterns?

I have charted the positions that Bellamy’s clubs have finished over the years. “Big” and “small” clubs are coloured red and blue respectively. A faded dot shows that Bellamy played for that club for only half a season or, in the case of Liverpool’s 2011-12, that the season is incomplete and his team’s position at the time of writing is used. At the bottom of the graphic, I’ve tagged on Bellamy’s transfer value and season goal tallies (all competitions) over the years so see if these can add anything interesting. As far as I can see, they don’t.

Returning to league positions; is the hypothesised cyclical storyline a reality? Sort of. The red dots are generally higher than the blue dots. The pattern is let down by several of the teams not conforming to the big/small labels I’ve placed on them, notably “small” West Ham finishing above “big” Man City in 2008/09.

What this can’t answer is if the cycle is caused by being underestimated by big clubs when he is in their employ or by being overestimated when he isn’t. Alternatively, it could be his propensity for belligerence that results in him being moved on so regularly.

What next for Bellamy? How many more revolutions of the cycle will he fit in to his career – after Liverpool inevitably decide he’s not for them for a second time – and where will it take him? QPR, Man Utd, Leicester and Barcelona, perhaps.

Notes on transfer value and goals:
i. His value is assumed to have changed uniformly between transfers.
ii. Values have not been adjusted for inflation.
iii. His current value, following his signing for Liverpool on a free, is not known.
iv. I have extrapolated the 6 goals he has scored so far for Liverpool in 2011/12 to an expected 10 goals for the season as a whole.

At the time of writing, Real Madrid and Ronaldo are in danger of pulling away and leaving us with two one-horse races and Valencia and Higuaín aren’t all that far away from Barça and Messi, but let’s not let facts get in our way.

As this will be updated as the season progresses, I’m leaving the graphing to Google. Click the tab at the bottom of the spreadsheet to see how the four ‘teams’ battled it out last season.





Behold: the excitement of the Liga title race has been doubled! In fact, it is probably even more than that as the possibility of internal conflicts emerges. For example; it is the closing seconds of the season. Real sit two points behind Messi and one behind Ronaldo and are being held at home to Mallorca when they win a penalty. Ronaldo places the ball on the spot when José Mourinho races onto the pitch demanding that someone else take the kick – if the Portugal captain scores, Real will gain no ground on him and finish second. Ronaldo refuses to relinquish the spot kick, he and Mourinho tussle, each trying to gouge an eye of the other’s, and are sent from the pitch. Kaká sends the penalty into the stands. Messi takes the title.

In the period covered, only Nottingham Forest have won the title one year after promotion and are only one of three champions crowned in any of their first three seasons.

The first half of the nineties was a golden era for the promoted side with Leeds and Blackburn winning the title in their second and third seasons respectively and Sheffield Wednesday, Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest making the top three straight after coming up. In the fifteen seasons since 1996, only two teams have troubled the top six in any of their first three campaigns after promotion (George Burley’s Ipswich and Graeme Souness’ Blackburn), something that was achieved seventeen times in the eight seasons up to 1996.

Although the possibility of making a mark on the top of the league has been reduced for the newly promoted, based on the recent squeezing of the data from the bottom as well as the top, the threat of over-stretching and collapsing also appears to have been cut. Since 1996, the lowest a team has fallen within three years of promotion was Derby who ended 2008-09 in 38th position (i.e.18th in the second tier, given a 20-team first tier) having been immediately relegated the year before. Between 1971 and 1996, our teams finished below 38th on sixteen occasions; including Wolves who, in 1985-86, found themselves 67th (i.e. second from bottom in the third tier) just three years after being runners-up in the Second Division. This change can probably be explained in one word: parachutepayments.

This post is similar to this one for two reasons. Firstly, it considers the performances of teams following their promotion to the top flight. Secondly, it laments the state of the modern game, be it the managerial merry-go-round or the strangling of competition. Please pardon my repetition and grumbling.

If you have the inclination, and can remember far enough back, please reminisce below about notable post-promotion campaigns.

As an avid but unlearned watcher of the game, a more than appropriate proportion of my enjoyment of weekly highlight programmes comes from watching the manager interviews. I am endlessly fascinated by their faces and the boring things they say. Okay, “endlessly” is an exaggeration. Nevertheless, I felt compelled to put pen (and pencil) to paper – hopefully it is somewhat interesting.

I’d done Mr. Bruce earlier last week in the hopes that this post will be done in time – not so! He is getting a big goodbye at the end there. In addition, there are three stern faces and one big mouth (both literally and figuratively).

Hopefully, you will be able to tolerate me through all Premier League managers in the weeks to come. And hopefully I won’t miss any more of them before they leave (so you can guess some of the faces that will be coming up next).

NB: All quotes are genuine, improbable as it may seem.

One hundred pictures of footballs from crests of clubs and national teams or associations.

On Goals Scored: failing to answer questions that no one asked.

See also: The graphical vocabulary of the 2011-2012 Premier League crests, Cresty bits quiz

My tribute comes in the form of five still images, each showing one of the five goals.

Since my days doodling as a schoolboy I have tried to draw goals. By “goals” I mean acts of scoring in football, not goalposts (I can just about draw those). How do you present action that occurs over three spacial dimensions as well as time in a single two-dimensional image? Which angle do you view from? Which of the players do you include? Which movements do you include? How do you show movement? Why not stop worrying and go back to drawing slightly rubbish pictures of Simpsons characters? These were all good questions.

The five images each use a different scheme to show a goal. Goal three resembles the standardised format I used to representing goals in this post, but otherwise they are intended to be less rigid and precise and more attempts to capture the je ne sais quoi of the goal.

Click images to enlarge.

1. Darren Peacock
2. David Ginola
3. Les Ferdinand
4. Alan Shearer
5. Philippe Albert

The aim of the graph is to show, for each managerial change, how many points the team would have finished with had the outgoing manager seen out the season and continued their points-per-match rate. That previous post has some more explanation and a key.

Given the small number of matches in most of these managerial tenures, the extrapolated points totals should only be considered after applying many a grain of salt. So much salt is needed, in fact, that you will need to be wary of wags asking if you want some analysis with your salt.
If you ignore Chris Hughton’s pointless three match spell at the helm in September, each manager performed worse than their predecessors. Had Kevin Keegan stayed in charge, Newcastle would have finished sixteen points clear of safety. They would also have survived if Joe Kinnear’s health problems had not forced him out. Newcastle would have still avoided the drop had Hughton been left to see out the season following his second appointment as caretaker. Change, in Newcastle’s 2008-09 campaign, was a bad thing.

This post looks at the performance of the sides in their first seasons after promotion to the Premier League, particularly the outcomes of twisting and appointing a replacement manager mid-season as opposed to sticking with the man who brought them up.

Defining the number of points that was needed to avoid relegation in a particular season is slightly more complicated than it may seem at first glance. Take the bottom of the 2009/10 table. For Burnley, Hull or Portsmouth, the minimum points total that could have led to survival was 35 points, with which a team could have trumped West Ham to 17th place on goal difference. For West Ham, or indeed any team that finished above the bottom three, the smallest number of points that could have been survived with was 30. So the target for survival is either 30 or 35 depending on which team is considered. As such, a line is drawn to both totals and the gap between is filled to create one “line” of increasing width (unless the 17th and 18th placed teams had the same number of points) that represents the points per game boundary of the drop zone.

Be sure to look out for evidence of what I am calling, and soon everyone will no doubt be calling, the Brand-new Boss Boost or BBB. That is the speculated effect of a new manager having an instant positive impact on a team’s results caused not by necessarily being a better man for the job, but by fresh competition for selection or some other superficial change.

I have applied this treatment to the last six seasons and analysed the graphs on a case by case basis. Given the each side’s varying circumstances and the small sample size, it would be foolish to try to draw sweeping generalisations about the merits of keeping your manager. The extrapolated “what-if” totals are, of course, thoroughly hypothetical. When I say things like “had he remained as manager” I mean “had he remained as manager and continued to win points at the same rate”.

Replacing Mick McCarthy gained Sunderland one shiny point.

Wigan and West Ham both had great seasons so their managers were never in danger.

Reading‘s victories, which came in four bursts, were many and Steve Coppell’s job was never at risk.

Neil Warnock kept Sheffield United above the pink line for almost all of the season’s second half but they slipped below it on the last day of the season.

Watford‘s start wasn’t dreadful but they did not come close to troubling the sunny side of the relegation boundary after three consecutive defeats in November. The club stuck with Aidy Boothroyd throughout.

Roy Keane struggled to find survival form until late in the season but Sunderland‘s patience was rewarded.

Alex McLeish won more points per match than Steve Bruce, who left Birmingham to join Wigan, but still came up short. Unlike Bruce, McLeish never once experienced life above the pink line.

Derby would have been better off to the tune of five points (or 45% of their actual total) by sticking with Billy Davies.

Tony Mowbray’s West Brom‘s winless streaks were punctuated by three runs of good form that probably each came at just the right time to convince his bosses to let him see the season out. The first two good spells brought their heads above water but the third did not.

Stoke closed the season very strongly and finished eleven points clear of the drop.

Hull, on the other hand, had an awful end to the season and their huge bulge above the relegation line was almost completely eaten away and they stayed up by a single point.

After back-to-back wins in December, Wolves only really flirted with the top edge of the relegation line and ended eight points clear.

Birmingham went twelve matches unbeaten in the middle of the season.

Burnley‘s dreadful form under Brian Laws could be interpreted as a continuation of a decline that begun under Owen Coyle, although the Scotsman’s great start to the season give him a hypothetical end-of-season total of 38 – eight points clear of the drop.

Alan Pardew’s first match ended Newcastle‘s winless run that had lasted the last five of Chris Hughton’s games in charge. The extent of his improvement over his predecessor depends on how long you think that poor run would have continued under Hughton.

Roy Hodgson’s impact on West Brom‘s point accumulation was not instant, he began with draws in winnable fixtures against Wolves and Stoke, but soon after the improvement was great – raking up points faster than Di Matteo had done even in his impressive start to the season. Had he been trusted with seeing out the season, Roberto Di Matteo would have kept West Brom up by a single point.

If you’re one to put faith in BBB, which I’m not, it would have been just what Blackpool needed to push them over the forty points line.

Reference: Statto.com