So after the glum feeling from today’s result, I got curious about a few things, like I often do. It’s a great way to forget about how a loss…err, sorry, a draw that should have been a win, feels.
I was over at Transfermarkt.com, looking initially at just how we’d done historically versus Burnley, and was a bit surprised to see that in ten league matches, we’d only lost one time to them. Shocked, really. Which then got me to wondering about other clubs. Everyone talks about the Top 6, which it really is now, but it wasn’t in the past. So I looked at ALL of the clubs we’ve played since Roman bought the club, that 2003/04 season, to see how we’d done. That’s where I realized that besides Chelsea, only six other clubs had been in the Premier League every season during that time frame:
- Manchester United
- Arsenal
- Tottenham
- Manchester City
- Liverpool
- Everton
I always tend to forget that Everton’s done that, and while I knew that City had at one point dipped down, that was prior to Roman buying Chelsea. Having looked at this list, I decided to see how all of our managers during this time frame actually did, against these sides. I mean, while it’s not necessarily a “Top 6”, per se, it is a de facto best six over the duration.
Obviously there could be endless debate over opponent quality over all of these seasons, so I’m not seriously claiming any sort of this manager is better than that one, etc. It’s more an interesting review of the results than anything else.
I sorted the table by Pts %, but I sorted the chart by Total Points, because it’s a bit more dramatic visually. Otherwise Mother Guus, the first stop, is quite high up the table and makes the visual look odd.
Now, again, this is just the PL matches against those six clubs listed above, but it paints an interesting picture. As we all know, there have really been four “dynasties” at Chelsea, each identified by having at least one Premier League title during that time. And those four time frames are also the only ones where a manager lasted more than one season, under Roman. This we all know, and know quite well. What’s interesting is how the matches against these six clubs seem indicative of the seasons as a whole.
Obviously both of Mourinho’s stays with the club have been remarkably successful. And interestingly Don Antonio and Uncle Carlo both did quite well, although Carlo had his struggles. I don’t think anyone has denied that Ranieri was the best of the rest for us, even though he only had the one season under Abramovich, it was easily his best season for the club.
And anyone that’s been following along this season, knows our struggles against the top clubs, of which of these six right now five are at the top of the table, along with Chelsea (and the sixth isn’t too far behind us, depending on the week). Both of those lines in the chart take a steep dive for Sarri, like they do for Robbie, Andre, and Big Phil as well. Mother Guus the Elder had a higher points ratio only because we drew something like 800 matches that half-season.
The chart shows win percentage, but visually it’s also quite easy to compare the losses (Yellow). And unfortunately for Maurizio Sarri, he’s got more losses than either wins or draws against these clubs. To be fair, they are all really good this year, but they’ve honestly always been the better sides. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
One of the key tenets of Mourinho regimes has always been to lose as few matches as possible. And that can easily be seen against these better sides. He tried to win every match against the bottom half, win all the home matches against the top half, or at least draw, and then draw if need be away from home against the top half. It wasn’t always pretty, but it was calculated, and it meant the most points.
I’ll probably write a future article in a few days showing both the total League results for this same set of managers, as well as the overall performances of them, breaking down the cups, etc. It’s interesting to see exactly where the current manager is, with respect to our brief history under current ownership, and as we are on the precipice of either once again picking (or plucking, if you will) yet another new manager from the herd at season’s end, or deciding to go against the historical grain and keeping a manager who hasn’t exactly delivered the usual expectations to get another round, it would be nice to perhaps find draw conclusions about which is more likely.
