Cobh Ramblers and Dave Hill part company...

[sadloserkid]

It's Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski.

[bennocelt]

A study has shown that the significance of a manager to a football club is over-estimated by fans and media. It is really the quality of the players that matter. In fact for a league of Ireland team I would suggest that the guy who runs the club lotto or those who manage the bar/social club have greater influence on results on the field than the actual person who selects the team. These people can raise funds so good/better players are likely to sign for the club and clubs with better paid players usually win more matches. Sometimes you can have an outlier, like Stephen Kenny at Dundalk last year but teams finish close to where there wage level suggest at the end of the season.

That is a load of complete bull, only have to look at Manure united to see that

[NeverFeltBetter]

Yup, "Soccernomics" is how the book is being called now. Quite a good read. I think they're quite right in their assertion about managers generally, (outdone in importance by the right people being in control of buying players was the main point as I recall) though they never claim they're meaningless to the process, just a convenient scapegoat when things go wrong. In United's case its absolutely a confluence of factors (manager struggling to adapt to new surroundings, transfer issues, ageing squad, new coaching regime etc), not least the sudden absence of the Ferguson presence, which was an aberration to the football cycle of managers.

But in this case, it's Cobh. They were hardly expecting a rocket to the top tier were they, no offence?