I Make Predictions as an Experiment

I noticed that Mark Lawrenson has picked us to lose 0-1 on Monday.   He could, of course, be right, but it seems like a stupid prediction.  We are playing well.  Aston Villa is playing poorly.  The only reason to pick Aston Villa to win (setting aside the views of optimistic fans) is to try to get credit for being unexpectedly right.

In my view, the goal of a prediction should be to get the prediction right and, perhaps, to learn something, not to look especially good when right and hope people forget when you are wrong.  As an experiment I have predicted this weekend's results based upon a simple set of rules.   I am posting this not because I believe there will be great interest in my predictions, but because I would like to be on the record so that I can know if I do well and not forget if I do poorly.

My rules are based upon the following assumptions:

First, I assume that eleven games worth of results gives real information that is more reliable than my feelings or “expert” analysis.  Therefore, I will pick the clubs who are doing well to beat the clubs that are doing poorly.

Second, only 33 games in 220 team games have been decided by a margin of two or more goals so I will never pick a team to win by two goals.

Third, clubs have scored 3 or more goals only 31 times in 220 team games so I will never pick a team to score more than two goals.

Fourth, so far 30 percent of the games ended in draws.  I will create a system that picks about 30 percent of the games to end in draws.

Fifth, there is a home field advantage.

Here are my rules:

I look at the two clubs’ current place in the table.  I subtract three from the home team’s rank.  If the modified table places are within three, I pick a draw.  Otherwise, I pick the team with the best modified table place to win.

To decide the score, I looked at goals allowed by my predicted winning team and the goals scored by my predicted losing team.  If they total more than the games played by both sides (22 this week) I pick a score of 2-1.  Otherwise I pick 1-0. 

If I am picking a draw I will just pick 1-1 because I cannot come up with a simple way to decide between 0-0, 1-1, and 2-2.  (So far this season, this would not have worked well because there have been a lot of 0-0 and 2-2 draws and relatively few 1-1 draws.  I do not believe this reflects any real tendency.)

Based upon this system my picks are

Chelsea-West Brom        2-1

Everton-West Ham         1-2

Leicester-Sunderland     1-1

Man City-Swansea          2-1

Newcastle-QPR                2-1

Stoke-Burnley                  1-0

Arsenal-Man U                 2-1

Palace-Liverpool              1-1

Hull-Spurs                         1-1

AV-Southampton            0-1

Let’s see how I do.

Eleven Games—More Statistical Playing Around

Having recently discovered Statto.com’s handy dandy historical League tables. (Here.)  I could not resist playing around with them some more.

I wanted to examine how many points clubs that finish at the top tend to have after eleven games and compare that figure to their point total at the end of the season.  Once again, I started with the 1995-1996 season.  I only tabulated the top six places.  I also calculated the average points per game the teams earned over the remaining 27 games.

                                11 Games            Final                       Pts/G 12-38

First:                      24.32                     85.63                     2.27

Second:                24.26                     79.37                     2.04

Third:                    21.00                     73.89                     1.96

Fourth:                 19.74                     68.26                     1.80

Fifth:                     18.53                     63.47                     1.66

Sixth:                    17.89                     60.58                     1.58

Right now Southampton has more points that the average first place team did after elven games.  Of course, the average team with 25 points was not four points behind a team that had not yet lost.

I then looked at things from the opposite perspective—where did the teams that were in the top six after eleven games finish and how many points did they have at the end of the season.  I also calculated their points per game for the rest of the season.

                                11 Games            Final                       Pts/G 12-38        Final Position

First:                      26.26                     79.21                     1.96                        2.26

Second:                24.42                     77.84                     1.97                        2.53

Third:                    23.16                     68.68                     1.69                        4.21

Fourth:                 19.47                     64.58                     1.67                        5.58

Fifth:                     19.26                     59.68                     1.50                        7.42

Sixth:                    18.47                     55.79                     1.38                        8.63

There seems to be a genuine difference in quality between the clubs who are in first or second after eleven games and the clubs just below them.  If this holds true this year, that is a good sign for Southampton.  Of course, it is just a tendency, not an absolute law of nature so it could mean absolutely nothing.

Except it is pretty clear that bad teams are never in second place after eleven games and average teams are almost never in second place.  If I were a statistician I could do something to make this both clearer and more confusing.  Suffice it to say that Southampton is probably a good team.  We could be a very good team and we could be an average team, but historically the former is more likely than the latter.

It occurred to me, as I was part way though this, that it would be interesting to carry the chart all the way down to last place and see what it says about the relegation battle.  However, it would also be way too much work since I am tabulating this by hand.  And right now, I am not that interested in relegation issues.

Twelve Games, Twenty-??? Points: What does it mean? (Part 3)

Okay.  I just can’t control myself so here is the point total summary for Premier League teams after twelve games in a 20 team league.  I only looked at teams with 21 or more points.  Here is what I got:

21 Points:  13 teams        Range:  3-13       Average finish:  6.62

22 Points:  18 teams        Range:  1-13       Average finish:  6.11

23 Points:  13 teams        Range: 2-8           Average finish:  4.85

24 Points:  13 teams        Range: 1-9           Average finish:  3.15

25 Points:  9 teams          Range  1-10         Average finish:  4.11

26 Points:  5 teams          Range: 1-4           Average finish:  2.40

27 Points:  6 teams          Range:  1-2          Average finish:  1.50

28 Points:  7 teams          Range:  2-6          Average finish:  3.29

29 Points:  5 teams          Range: 1-3           Average finish:  2.00

30 Points:  4 teams          Range: 1-5           Average finish:  2.50

31 Points: 3 teams           Range: 1-2           Average finish:  1.33

32 Points:  No teams

33 Points:  No teams

34 Points:  1 team            Range: 1               Average finish:  1.00

Two teams eventually finished first with less than 21 points in 12 games:  Manchester United (19 points) in 1996-1997 and Arsenal (20 points) in 2001-2002.  Maybe I should have left the cut off at 19 games, but I am not going back and doing it all again.

If Chelsea wins its next game the league championship seems virtually over--and they ought to be able to beat West Brom at home. 

Once again, we cannot reach the cut off line which appears to all but guarantee a great season which is 29 points in 12 games.  Only one team has failed to finish in what would now be a Champions League slot after getting 29 or more points.

Although, six place is pretty good which would put the cut off line at 26 points which would mean we only need a draw against Aston Villa.

I do not have any more insightful analysis so the numbers will just have to speak for themselves.  I will try to resist doing thirteen games for a couple of weeks.

Eleven Games, Twenty-??? Points: What does it mean? (Part 2)

If how many points a club has after ten games is significant, surely how many points they have after eleven games must be at least ten percent more significant?

Maybe not.  But I decided to tabulate the information anyway.  And this time I am doing it at a reasonable hour--at least in terms of California time.  I decided to post this now, rather than after Saturday’s games so that people will know what they want to cheer for.

I looked at the points achieved by each team after eleven games in the Premier League since it went to 20 teams and compared it to the teams’ final league position.  I only looked at teams with 19 or more points.  Here is what I got:

19 Points:  17 teams        Range:  1-13       Average finish:  5.76

20 Points:  23 teams        Range:  2-17       Average finish:  6.70

21 Points:  12 teams        Range:  1-12       Average finish:  4.92

22 Points:  9 teams          Range:  1-9          Average finish:  5.44

23 Points:  10 teams        Range: 1-7           Average finish:  3.10

24 Points:  6 teams          Range: 1-3           Average finish:  2.00

25 Points:  12 teams        Range  2-10         Average finish:  3.83

26 Points:  8 teams          Range: 1-3           Average finish:  1.75

27 Points:  4 teams          Range:  1-5          Average finish:  2.00

28 Points:  2 teams          Range:  1-2          Average finish:  1.50

29 Points:  No teams

30 Points:  No teams

31 Points: 2 teams           Range: 1               Average finish: 1.00

The number one takeaway from this information is that if we beat Leicester today we cannot win the league, but if we lose or draw, we still have a chance.  Less frivolously, these numbers suggest that if Chelsea beats Liverpool they are very unlikely to finish anywhere but first--not just because it will be difficult to catch them but because only very, very good teams earn 29 points in 11 games.

If we win Saturday, only 16 teams in the 20 team Premier League era will have gotten off to better eleven game starts than us. Every team that had 25 points after eleven games finished in the top half.  If you exclude Wigan in 2005-2006, every 25 point team finished at least sixth.

All the 22 and 23 point teams have finished in the top half as well so we are looking pretty good no matter what happens.

Once again, we cannot reach the real cut off line which appears to be 26 points in eleven games.  Only one team has failed to finish in what would now be a Champions League slot after getting 26 or more points.

No team has ever won the league without earning at least 19 points in eleven games, but four teams have done that.  This means that we do not want Arsenal or West Ham to win.

That’s it for now.  Enjoy the numbers.

How Close Are We? (Part 2)

Back in August I used the data from Football Manager 2014 to consider how close we were to competing for Europe, the Champions League, and the title.  A lot has changed since then, but really not much according to the new database for Football Manager (FM) 2015.

In my original post (found here)  I compared our starting eleven with the starting eleven for Everton, Arsenal, and Manchester City.   I will repeat that comparison using the new database.  I believe the new database is supposed to represent the situation as of 2 September 2014.  It certainly was finalized before 19 September 2014 since it does not show Boruc as being out on loan to Bournemouth.

The numbers I am using are the FM Current Ability (CA) numbers which make for the easiest comparison.  As always, I recognize that these numbers are not reality, they are simply easily accessible and easy to use.

Football Manager 2014 (These are the FM 2014 numbers for the 2015 teams as of when I made the comparison—except for Southampton, which was for the end of last season.)

Pos         Southampton                    Everton                                    Arsenal                                 Man City

G             Baruc 142                             Howard 150                        Szczensy 150                      Hart 148

LB           Shaw 139                             Baines 160                           Gibbs 145                            Clichy 148

CB           Lovren 150                          Distin 160                             Mertesacker 159              Kompany 171

CB           Fonte 130                            Jagielka 156                        Koscielny 158                     Demakelis 148

RB           Clyne 140                             Coleman 147                      Debuchy 147                      Zabaleta 160

CM         Wanyama 146                    Barry 150                             Arteta 158                           Toure 176

CM         Schneiderlin 141               McCarthy 143                     Ramsey 158                     Fernandinho 155

AM         Lallana 152                          Miralles 155                        Ozil 171                                 Silva 174

AM         Rodriguez 142                    Pienaar 148                         Cazorla 165                         Nasri 162

AM         Rameriz 142                        McGready 144                   Walcott 159                        Navas 160

ST           Lambert 142                       Lukaku 151                          Sanchez 162                       Argueo 180

TOTAL   1566                                       1664                                       1732                                       1782

In constructing the lineups for the current season, I had to adjust for the fact that we are no longer playing a 4231. 

Football Manager 2015 (These are the FM 2015 numbers for the post-transfer window teams.)

Pos         Southampton                    Everton                                Arsenal                 Man City

G             Forster 140                         Howard 153                        Szczensy 152                      Hart 158

LB           Bertrand 136                      Baines 159                           Gibbs 145                            Kolarov 146

CB           Alderweireld 143              Distin 138                             Mertesacker 159              Kompany 170

CB           Fonte 131                            Jagielka 155                        Koscielny 158                     Demakelis 149

RB           Clyne 137                             Coleman 149                      Debuchy 148                      Zabaleta 165

CM         Schneiderlin 145               Barry 151                             Cazola 163                           Toure 182

CM         Wanyama 144                    McCarthy 145                    Ramsey 160                     Fernandinho 157

C/AM    Davis 136                             Barkley 143                         Wilshire 150                        Silva 174

AM         Rodriguez 148                    Pienaar 145                         Ozil 171                                 Nasri 164

AM         Tadic 145                              Miralles 154                        Walcott 159                        Navas 160

ST           Pelle 140                              Lukaku 148                          Sanchez 162                       Argueo 180

TOTAL   1545                                       1640                                       1727                                       1805

There are several changes in how FM rates our players.  Betrand, for example, has become slightly worse by joining us.  Clyne has also gotten slightly worse since last year.  On the other hand, Rodriguez has gone up by 6 points and Pelle has gone up by 8 points.

FM’s conclusion, however, is that our starting 11 is 21 points worse than it was last year.  This is not a trivial difference.  It is about the equivalent of replacing one good player with a world class player.

Everton:  FM thinks Everton has gotten 24 points worse.  However, the difference there is explained almost entirely by Distin dropping from being a world class defender to merely an adequate defender.  This means, however, that we are pretty much just as close to catching up with Everton as we were before.

Arsenal:  Arsenal has dropped just 5 points.  However, this is misleading because Arsenal has a bunch of players who don’t fit into their best eleven because of their position, but who have higher scores than some of the players in the best eleven.  Welbeck and Giroud, for example, are 154 and 153 respectively.  In other words, Arsenal has a lot more depth than either Southampton or Everton.  Chambers was a 126 for us, but is now 133.  He has also progressed from having no significant ability to play center back to being very, very good at it.

Manchester City:  FM has Manchester City being significantly improved, which is only to be expected following their championship season.  However, it certainly appears to overrate them right now.  Yaya Toure’s 182 is a real anomaly.  This shouldn’t be a surprise though.  He is 31 years old and has had a bad year personally—a significant drop off in performance should be expected.  Maybe City should sold him in the summer like he asked.

Southampton will have great difficulty catching up with these teams’ FM CA scores.  To catch Everton we need to add 95 points of CA; Arsenal requires 182 CA; and, Manchester City requires 260 CA.  That kind of improvement through the transfer market is simply not possible on our budget.  For comparison purposes, West Ham is 37 points behind us. Swansea is 14 points behind us.  Burnley is 140 points behind us. In other words, FM believes Burnley is closer to catching us than we are to catching Manchester City.

On the other hand, it is pretty clear that, as of now, Southampton is playing far better than the FM 2015 database would permit.  After all, according to FM the only Southampton players good enough to start for Everton are Alderweireld, Rodriguez, and Schneiderlin.  And Schneiderlin would push Barkley out of the starting lineup which is not what would really happen.

Thus, our improvement would have to come through efforts that are not measurable in FM teams—at least not right away.  If we keep playing like this through the January transfer window, the final FM 2015 database will undoubtedly award many of our players much higher ratings.

As for me, this means a couple of things: first, while I will still use the FM data base for blog articles, I will be taking it with even more grains of salt than before; and, second, it is probably just as well that I am so busy with work that I will not have time to start a FM save right now.  It would be too discouraging since I would inevitably far underperform real life.

Ten Games, Twenty-Two Points: What does it mean?

There have been various posts or news reports suggesting that having 22 points in ten games means something significant such as that we have an 85% chance of making the Champions League.  (This claim would be wrong because it ignores the possibility of the fourth place team being deprived of a Champions League slot like what happened to Tottenham when Chelsea won while finishing 6^th in the league.)   I decided to investigate this instead of going to bed at a sensible hour.

I looked at the points achieved by each team after ten games in the Premier League since it went to 20 teams and compared it to the teams’ final league position.  I only looked at teams with 17 or more points.  Here is what I got:

17 Points:  24 teams        Range:  2-15       Average finish:  7.58

18 Points:  13 teams        Range:  1-9          Average finish:  4.84

19 Points:  16 teams        Range:  1-13       Average finish:  5.63

20 Points:  14 teams        Range:  1-17       Average finish:  5.57

21 Points:  11 teams        Range:  1-12       Average finish:  4.54

22 Points:  12 teams        Range:  1-10       Average finish:  4.17

23 Points:  9 teams          Range: 1-4           Average finish:  2.11

24 Points:  5 teams          Range: 1-5           Average finish:  2.00

25 Points:  5 teams          Range  1-4           Average finish:  2.20

26 Points:  2 teams          Range: 2-3           Average finish:  2.50

27 Points:  1 team            Range:  2              Average finish:  2.00

28 Points:  2 teams          Range:  1              Average finish:  1.00

So what does this all mean for Southampton this year?  Probably not much.

In the 19 full seasons with a 20 team Premier League only 24 teams have gotten off to better ten game starts than us. Every team that had 22 points after ten games finished in the top half.

The real dividing line appears to be 23 points after ten games.  Only one team has failed to finish in what would now be a Champions League slot after getting 23 or more points in ten games.  Too bad we didn’t pick up a point against Liverpool or Tottenham—we would have it made.  Of course, that is not how it works.

No team has ever been relegated after earning 17 points in their first ten games.  The team that did the worst was Hull City in 2008-2009 dropping to 17^th place after earning 20 points in ten games.  They only earned 15 more points in their remaining 28 games.

No team has ever won the league without earning at least 18 points in ten games and only one team, Manchester United in 2002-2003, has done that.

Newcastle failed to win the league in 1995-1996 despite starting with 27 points in ten games.  The best performances by teams with less than 17 points after ten games were Liverpool in 1997-1998 who finished third despite earning only 15 points in their first ten games , Newcastle United who finished third in 2002-2003 despite earning only 16 points in their first ten games, Liverpool who finished third in 2006-2007 despite earning only 14 points in ten games, and Arsenal in 2011-2012 who finished third after earning just 16 points in their first ten games.

I am now sleepy and it is 3:21 am my time so good night.

Racism in English Football and the Rooney Rule (Part 2)

In Part One I concluded with two digressions: a thought experiment about Wayne Rooney and an expressed intent to watch Clarke Carlisle’s documentary “Is Football Racist?”  The Wayne Rooney question requires no further discussion.  It was intended to make people think.  There is no right answer.

The documentary was quite interesting and I highly recommend it.   It can be found here.   Not surprisingly, Carlisle concluded that there was racism in football—even though he never personally experienced it.  He also appeared to conclude that the problem was worse in some other countries than it was in England—no doubt true.  The most interesting part of the documentary to me was the examination of the discrimination against English players of Asian descent.  Apparently, even today many clubs will not sign such players.  Some articles on the subject can be found here, here, and here.    

I never intended to focus my discussion on this issue specifically on discrimination against any one minority.  If racism is a problem and, obviously, I think it is, the problem should be addressed for all minorities who are subject to such discrimination.  In fact, any solution should not be limited to discrimination against racial minorities.  If English football is discriminating against gay people, that should stop.  If women want to become coaches, managers, or referees they should be stopped by their inability to do the job, not by a refusal to hire them in the first place.

Having established, at least to my satisfaction, that racism and other forms of discrimination exist in English football, my next two questions were whether the football authorities should try to fix that problem and, if so, whether the Rooney Rule is an appropriate remedy.  To address these questions, I must explain the Rooney Rule.

Many people think that the Rooney Rule involves some kind of racial quota.  Therefore, they oppose the rule because they claim that any kind of racial preference is wrong. I do not agree with that claim, but it does not matter because the Rooney Rule does not involve a hiring quota. Instead, as implemented in the NFL, the Rooney Rule simply requires that every time there is a vacancy at the head coach level or in high-level management, the NFL club must interview at least one minority candidate for the job.  They are not required to hire the minority candidate and, most of the time, they do not.  Nevertheless, since the implementation of the Rooney Rule, the percentage of NFL head coaches who are black has gone up.  Before the rule was implemented eleven years ago, there had only been seven minority head coaches in the entire history of the league.  Since that time, 17 of the 32 NFL teams have hired at least one minority head coach.    However, that total is somewhat deceptive because, as of now, the total number of minority NFL head coaches has just gone from seven to 20.    In 2013, there were eight head coaching vacancies, but no minority hires.  The NFL responded by creating an advisory panel of high profile people to put together a short list of qualified minority candidates each year to be distributed to team owners. In 2014, two of the seven head coaches hired in the off season were minorities.

Logically, if some form of the Rooney Rule were implemented in English football, it would require teams to interview a least one minority candidate for each managerial opening, but it would not require a minority hire.   One possible problem with this rule is that it might be illegal.  This is not a trivial claim.

Clearly, racism is far more legal in the United States than it is in the United Kingdom.  Criminal charges were filed against John Terry for his allegedly racist statements.  Had such statements been made by a player during an NFL game, the player probably would have been penalized, fined, and suspended, but he would not have faced criminal charges.  In the United States, the First Amendment to the Constitution protects our right to say racist things to anyone we want at virtually any time.  I am free to publically call the President of the United States the N-word repeatedly with no fear of legal consequences unless I was making a serious threat to him.  On the other hand, I am not sure it would be legal for me to use that word at all in England even in a discussion like this.  (But maybe it would be ok.  See here.)

Over the past 40 plus years, there have been various affirmative action programs in United States which were designed to make up for the racism of society and past discrimination by giving racial preferences in hiring, school admissions, and other areas to minorities.  Based upon my understanding of British law, such affirmative action plans would not have been legal in the United Kingdom—until the passage of the Equity Act 2010.  (My understanding of the relevant law is based primarily upon a brief review of the Equity Act website (here) and a Law Review Article from the Fordham Intellectual Property, Media & Entertainment Law Journal entitled “Red Card: Using the National Football League’s ‘Rooney Rule’ to Eject Race Discrimination from English Professional Soccer’s Managerial and Executive Hiring Practices” by Jeremy Corapi—found here.)   

However, even now the legality of preferential hiring in England is dubious.   Take, for example, these two illustrations from the Equity Act:

A police service which employs disproportionately low numbers of people from an ethnic minority background identifies a number of candidates who are as qualified as each other for recruitment to a post, including a candidate from an under-represented ethnic minority background. It would not be unlawful to give preferential treatment to that candidate, provided the comparative merits of other candidates were also taken into consideration.

An employer offers a job to a woman on the basis that women are under-represented in the company’s workforce when there was a male candidate who was more qualified. This would be unlawful direct discrimination.

Given these two examples, I do not know how any English employer would ever feel safe admitting that they hired someone preferentially based upon their race, ethnic background, or gender.  However, the Rooney Rule avoids this problem because it simply asks the club to hire the most qualified person they interview, after interviewing at least one minority candidate. The effectiveness of the rule is dependent upon breaking the cycle where by the (mostly) white club owners and board members hire from the group of people they know—white footballers.

The fact that the Rooney Rule appears to have been at least a partial success in the NFL does not mean that it would work in English football.  There are a number of significant differences between the United States and the NFL when compared with England and the English football leagues.  Minorities are a much higher proportion of the population in the United States than they are in England—36.3% according to the 2010 census as reported by Wikipedia here.  We view people as members of a minority both by race, if they are not white, and by ethnicity if they are Hispanic or Latino.  Functionally, this means that people whose national origin is from any country south of the USA border are considered minorities—although technically Hispanic would also refer to people from Spain, but not people from Portugal or Brazil, but people from Brazil are still Latino.  This means that, by American standards, the BPL is not doing too badly with minority representation at the managerial level because there are four minority managers:  Roberto Martinez, Manuel Pelligrini, Gus Poyet, and Mauricio Pochettino.  But I digress.

Other differences between the NFL and English football arise out of the financial incentives that are created by the structure of each sport.  The most significant difference is, of course, the existence of relegation and promotion in England and the non-existence of anything like that in the United States.  The Salary Caps and revenue sharing processes in the NFL are also important.  Basically, while no NFL team wants to hire a bad head coach and lose games, hiring a bad head football coach is not the end of the world.  You may have a bad season or two, but the coach cannot permanently cripple your team.  Your club’s revenue will basically remain unchanged because of revenue sharing. In fact, given the preference awarded to bad teams in the annual draft of college football players, there are advantages to being really bad rather than simply being mediocre.

Obviously, in English football the exact opposite is true.  Sustained mediocrity is the goal of some BPL clubs, whereas a single bad year might lead directly to the financial destruction and possible dissolution of your club.

This means that the stakes are relatively higher in English football managerial hiring decisions than they are in NFL hiring decisions.  As a result, it is probably harder to get a club owner or president to consider an untried or inexperienced manager because of the risk it could go disastrously wrong.  For the person making the hiring decision there is the problem of blame.  If you hire Mark Hughes and your team gets relegated you can fall back on the self-evident claim that Mark Hughes was a qualified manager.  If you hire Joe Nobody and you get relegated you have no one to blame but yourself.  You can’t even blame Joe Nobody because you will have already fired him.

When I reached this point in my analysis, I realized that I needed to know where English football managers came from.  In order to determine that, I went through the last five years of managers in the BPL and the Championship and determined what job they held immediately prior to becoming a manger in each of the two respective leagues.  The results of that research can be found on an earlier blog post.    As you can see, BPL manager's prior job was usually as a BPL manager or a manager in the Championship.  The primary prior job for Championship managers other than Championship or BPL manager was League 1 manager.  I chose not to continue to research down to League 1 and League 2 for several reasons.  First, I did not want to spend the time.  Second, the historical information on the identity of those managers was not as readily available.  And, third, I did not believe it was necessary to illustrate my point.

This suggests that the best way to get minorities to be managers in the BPL is to get minorities to be managers in the Championship.  The best way to get minorities to be managers in the Championship is to get minorities to be managers in League 1.  I assume that the best way to get minorities to be managers in League 1 is for them to be managers in League 2.  I don’t know whether the trend would continue all the way down to the bottom of the pyramid.  Quite possibly, at some level it makes more sense to promote a coach or player from the same or higher level to manager than it does to hire the manager of an amateur club.

Nevertheless, this suggests that for the Rooney Rule to be effective, it would have to be imposed in the lower levels of the football league, not just in the BPL.  In fact, one could almost make a case that the rule might be unnecessary at the BPL level because if there were a sufficiently large pool of minority Championship managers, they would inevitably become managers in the BPL either by earning promotion for their teams or in the normal hiring process.

Recently, FIFA Vice President Jeffrey Webb, stated that racism in English football is “right in front of your face. ”   He cited Eddie Newton, an assistant manager at Chelsea when they won the Champions league, who was now working as a Chelsea youth coach, as an example of someone who was qualified to manage but could not get an interview.

Former Birmingham and Derby defender Michael Johnson stated that, since retiring from play in 2009, he had found it impossible to get a job in management, despite having an UEFA Pro license.  He applied for 25-30 coaching jobs and received only three interviews.  

Of course, it is impossible to prove that racism prevented either of these two people from being hired.  It is possible that there was a perfectly good reason for each and every decision that was made not to hire or, even, interview them.  The problem is that if they, and other qualified minority candidates, can’t get interviews, their changes of being hired are virtually non-existent.  If the Rooney Rule were implemented, these two individuals, and others like them, would get interviews and, very likely, some of the individuals making the hiring decisions would choose to hire them.  This is exactly what happened in the NFL.

On the other hand, it may well be that, due to past discrimination, the number of minority English coaches qualified to manager in the BPL, or at least at the very top of the BPL, is quite small.  If, fore example, there literally are no English minority managers who would reasonably be considered to be qualified to manage Manchester United, then there would be no point in requiring Manchester United to interview a minority for the job.  However, this is not true further down the pyramid.  The relatively small number of minority coaches with an UEFA Pro license might explain why few of them get hired to manage a BPL club, but it does not justify not hiring them to manage a League One club where only a lesser license, experience, and skill level is required.

To me this makes the appropriate solution obvious.  The Rooney Rule should be enacted, but it should be phased in starting with League Two.  After a couple of years, the situation should be re-evaluated and unless there is a good reason to change course, the rule should be applied to League One.  Two years later, the Rule should be applied to the Championship.  Unless there is a good reason to change course, the BPL should be next.  In addition, teams should be required or, at least, encouraged to offer their players and coaches any necessary assistance in obtaining more advanced coaching licenses. Further, the English version of the Rooney Rule should apply to all relevant victims of discrimination which would include racial minorities as well as gay people and women.

Of course, there is nothing magical about my choice of two years for each step of the phase in process.  That amount of time sounded reasonable to me, but perhaps one year or three years would be better.  Or maybe, the process should start simultaneously at both League One and League Two. Maybe the rule should apply to all coaching vacancies, not just managerial vacancies.  Those decisions should be made by people more familiar with the system than I.

What is clear to me is that the status quo is both unacceptable and unsustainable.  Pressure for action will mount and, if nothing is done, it will create severe problems for football.  Black players will come to realize that while there has certainly been progress over the past thirty years, they are blocked from any further progress by institutionalized racism.

The football establishment is currently talking like it wants to deal with this problem, but there is a risk in talking about solving a problem—if you don’t eventually take action, your hypocrisy will become clear and the situation will degenerate to where it is worse than if you had just ignored the problem.  The FA will want to avoid that by doing something.  Because it worked to some degree in the NFL, absent a better idea, the Rooney Rule is the most logical something to do.

Note: I apologize for the uneven spacing of the article.  Blogger insisted upon it and I do not edit HTML so I was stuck with it.