Thu 20 Sep 2007, 10:01
When Alan Hansen mentioned that Mr. Ferguson has rotated for years, it marked the first time that anyone in the national media, to our knowledge, has stated this little known fact. Many love to point out that Liverpool’s Rafa Benitez is far and away the league leader in changing his side from game-to-game (in fact this is exactly what Match Of The Day were talking about when the statement was made), but the fact is that many of the top teams rotate payers as well and rotate at a higher level than reported.
We discussed rotation and its merits in detail in this years book (does it affect winning, does it effect stability, does it improve form in the second half of the season, the optimal number of changes to make etc) and discovered a number of important findings that blow away some of the myths of what rotation is good for and exactly which teams use it.
Table 1.1 Top-10 teams in starting line-up changes-per-game in 2006/07
Rank Team Changes-per-game
1 Man United 3.19
2 Liverpool 3.19
3 Newcastle 2.84
4 Chelsea 2.73
5 Arsenal 2.62
6 Sheff United 2.51
7 Tottenham 2.49
8 West Ham 2.43
9 Charlton 2.41
10 Portsmouth 2.27
Probably one of the biggest myths blown away by our research last year was that Rafa Benitez was not in fact the runaway winner in the ‘rotation’ stakes as other sources love to report (Table 1.1). The actual truth of the matter was that Mr. Ferguson and Rafa Benitez made the exact same number of changes to their starting line-ups throughout last season. In fact, when entering the final game of the season Sir Alex was ahead by five changes. Benitez, in deciding to rest players before their Champions League Final, made nine changes to his starting line-up for the final game of the season, whereas Ferguson made only four.
Additionally, Ferguson might have been the more likely manager of the two to stick with the same starting eleven in consecutive games (four compared to 0 for Benitez), but he was also the more likely to make five or more changes to his line-up (ten compared with eight for Benitez). In fact, had it not been for Liverpool’s success in the Champions League, that last statistic would not have ended so close, because with ten games remaining in the season Ferguson had made more than five changes on nine occasions to Benitez’s four.
Taking everything into account the two managers were essentially equal in terms of their rotation policy. There were subtle differences, but the overall figures were the same. Or were they?
According to Hansen on MOTD Ferguson has always rotated more at home, but kept a stable line-up when playing away. This statement was used to imply that Rafa Benitez does not do the same, after making multiple changes for Liverpool’s away clash with Portsmouth this past weekend. To investigate this statement we cannot simple use our game-to-game rotation data, since to keep a stable team away and a ‘rotated’ team at home would show up as numerous changes-per-game flipping from the stable team to the rotated team. To research this we basically used the same method, but looked at the changes made by each manager to their home and away line-ups in isolation of each other. We treated the first game of the season both home and away as the baseline and calculated the changes-per-game each manager made from then on (Table 1.2).
Table 1.2 Ferguson versus Benitez Home and Away rotation in 2006/07
Changes-per-game Same 5 or more 2 or less
Ferguson Home-toHome 4.00 0 8 3
Away-toAway 2.61 3 4 10
Benitez Home-to-Home 3.11 0 4 7
Away-to-Away 3.06 0 3 10
On first look you might think Hansen was spot on, but the matter is more complicated once you scratch the surface. Ferguson did indeed rotate much more at home than he did away. He made a massive 4.00 changes-per-game last season in home contests and only 2.61 changes-per-game away. The statement of a more stable away side is relative in terms of Manchester United, but put into the context of the league as a whole it still represented an incredibly high number of changes.
For Benitez the split between home and away looks fairly even, however the average figure is clouded by the nine changes made by Benitez before Liverpool’s away contest at Portsmouth the weekend before their Champions League semi-final second leg against Chelsea. Remove that figure and Benitez made 2.71 changes-per-game in away contests last season – a similar figure to that of Ferguson’s.
Add to that knowledge that the median number of changes made by each manager in away games was two and that both managers made two or less changes from between away games a total of 10 times and it is hard to say definitively that Benitez rotated more than Ferguson away from home. Both look for slightly more stability away from home and make fewer changes away than they do overall. Therefore, the single biggest difference between the two (last year at least) is actually how much more Ferguson rotates at home than Benitez.
So far this season there is too few data to make any meaningful conclusion. However, Benitez has made three more changes than the United manager in one less contest. It is also true that Ferguson’s options have been severely reduced by injury in the early games, with many major players missing and consequently making quality rotation impossible.
It was refreshing to finally hear someone bring some reality to the debate. However, the full truth was still not revealed. All teams rotate through injury, fitness and tactics to some extent, but some more than others. Benitez and Ferguson were definitely the runaway leaders last season, but while one was criticised the other used essentially the same policy and won the title without even a column inch on the subject.
When will smart analysis of games return?
http://www.thefootballreview.co.uk/articles/article.aspx?id=23