Latics v Cheltenham Town: Cotterill and Mellon prove that managers matter

In Soccernomics, the book about stats in football, Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski argue that managers aren’t a significant determining factor in the performance of football teams. They argue that player wages give us a better indication of whether or not a team will be successful.

In other words, you can have a dud in the dugout, and the expensive team will win anyway. You could have a genius in hotseat but, if the chairman or chairwoman hasn’t opened the vault, their team is going nowhere.

Most football fans know instinctively that that is absolute rubbish – for one thing, it conveniently places statisticians above football managers in matters of football wisdom, which is where they would like to be one day, and where they undoubtedly will be after the end times.

The main counterargument, of course, comes from living, breathing examples of managers who make a difference.

Step forward Steve Cotterill, the Cheltenham Town manager making his almost annual pilgrimage to Boundary Park tomorrow (last season he was in charge of Forest Green Rovers: they didn’t get promoted but he did).

After getting hammered 0-3 by Latics back in September, Cheltenham sacked Michael Flynn and brought in Cotterill 10 days later. When Cotterill took over, Cheltenham were bottom of the league, having won only one their first 10 games of the season. The Robins were absolute bobbins.

Now they are two points and three places behind Latics having played a game more. Cotterill has won eight of his 15 fixtures in charge of a side that looked absolutely rancid when he took them over.

For the sake of the argument with the eggheads, between the transfer windows, Cotterill added not one single player to his squad. Managers don’t make a difference. They make THE difference. QED.

MELLON’S AMBITION

Another manager whose record destroys the claim that managers don’t matter is Micky Mellon, who is closing in on his seventh promotion…or is he? Mellon this week gave an exclusive interview to the Daily Mail in which he mentioned publicly, for only the second time, that he wants promotion with Oldham to League One (the first time he said something similar was the club’s 130th anniversary dinner last summer).

The lack of an abiding objective this season may have had the effect of taking pressure off the players, many of whom lived through Latics’ woeful drop in performance last season when promotion was the ever-present pressure. But at the same time, it would be nice if Mellon came out and said more precisely what he wants from this season.

We know that signings will be few and far between – a loanee here and perhaps a free transfer there. But we also know that Mellon is, like Cotterill, a difference maker. The size and expense of the squad is for the stats people to worry about. When you’re Micky Mellon, you’re perfectly entitled to back yourself, and whoever you have at your disposal, and to think big.

LESS EXCLUSIVITY PLEASE

As a budding local journalist, Mellon’s exclusive interview with the Daily Mail left a little bit of a sour taste. We know Latics chief executive Darren Royle is friends with Mike Keegan, the Mail’s chief sports reporter – Keegan often helps the club out by compering events and such like.

But giving the Mail an exclusive Mellon interview – not with Keegan, but that’s by the by – and putting it behind a paywall is a bit disrespectful to Oldham fans who are not Daily Mail subscribers.

For a start, that is likely to mean almost all Oldham fans. Among the reasons why people don’t subscribe to the Mail are its tendency to produce alarmist headlines, to exaggerate health scares, to foster moral panics. It’s famous for distorting scientific studies, for targeting groups to which a great many Latics fans belong (such as the working class), and for undermining the rule of law in our country.

In the past, the Mail promoted fascism in this country and abroad, and supported the appeasement of Hitler up to the point where Lord Rothermere, the then proprietor, would have been the one rolling out the red carpet so Der Führer didn’t get wet feet when he landed in Great Yarmouth (or wherever).

Of course I’ve gone too far, but I’ve also made my point. Doesn’t every Latics fan deserve to read those insights, not just the ones who subscribe to the Daily Mail? The good will in the town and farther afield towards the club is at an historic high, but it won’t stay that way if the club limits media access to selected friends to benefit niche, esoteric and extreme media channels such as the Daily Mail.