Why Changing Manager’s At Arsenal Will Bring More Pain Than Joy

Sometime in the near future – likely within the next 1-3 years, Arsenal will be faced with the task of replacing Arsene Wenger. The reason could be one of many – more than likely it will be his retirement. The question is however, what are Arsenal going to do when that time comes?
Of course there are many candidates who could come in and manage the club. Whether you like Wenger or not, he will have achieved one of the things he said he wanted to do with the move to the club – leave it in a state for his successor to be in a good place to carry on and hopefully forward.
But is it that easy?
I was interested in a comment that was made recently at the Arsenal Supporter’s Trust meeting with Phillipe Auclair and Rory Smith as their guests. During that meeting Rory Smith said the problem with Arsenal is it has become institutionalized by Wenger over his tenure.
Institutionalization is the process by which an organization integrates its fundamental values and objectives in to the organization’s culture and structure. What this means for Arsenal is that Wenger’s “socialist” approach to the club is so ingrained it’s everywhere. What this means for the eventual successor is that while they will have to deal with Wenger’s shadow looming over the place – the culture that was built around him will still be significant.
This is what happened with United and Fergie’s retirement. Fergie was United and United was Fergie. Moyes and Van Gaal were “failures” because of the institutionalization of United by Fergie. Maybe the personality of Jose Mourinho is a way to combat that but remember since Moyes and Van Gaal weren’t successful in instilling their own virtues at the club – it will be hard for Mourinho – a classic short-timer to do anything about it either.
Arsenal need to plan for succession now. They need to look at how both United have failed in their transitions and Bayern have succeeded. Bayern’s success is because no manager sets the culture of the club. The culture of the club is established down with direction emanating from the board where football people, former players and business interests mold together to drive forward the Bayern machine. It’s why when a new manager comes in, the only thing that changes is playing style and philosophy – not the club culture.
Now there may be an argument to be had that says if you replace Wenger with a like-minded manager then perhaps the culture can move forward as established by Wenger. But how many of the top-tier manager’s these days run from a “social” nurturing environment? You just don’t know and in the end it’s a crap shoot.
But it isn’t something that the club should just assume they can get right on Post-Wenger Day 1. It’s something that needs to happen now. Again Bayern, they’ve always got their plan well in place before the transition from one manager to the next occurs.
The other thing to consider is that changing the manager isn’t always going to result in winning. As many like to argue changing manager is going to be the catalyst for Arsenal getting back to winning ways.
Not so fast their Cochise. We’ve laid out one reason why this is likely not possible but there is also a second, more scientific concern.
A recent study published in the Social Science Quarterly suggests that these moves may not lead to the happiness the fans envision. E. Scott Adler, Michael J. Berry, and David Doherty looked at coaching changes in college football in the US from 1997 to 2010. What they found should give pause to people who demanded a coaching change (or still hope for one). They found that:
…we use matching techniques to compare the performance of football programs that replaced their head coach to those where the coach was retained. The analysis has two major innovations over existing literature. First, we consider how entry conditions moderate the effects of coaching replacements. Second, we examine team performance for several years following the replacement to assess its effects.
We find that for particularly poorly performing teams, coach replacements have little effect on team performance as measured against comparable teams that did not replace their coach. However, for teams with middling records—that is, teams where entry conditions for a new coach appear to be more favorable—replacing the head coach appears to result in worse performance over subsequent years than comparable teams who retained their coach.
Simply put – if you are a bad team, changing your coach won’t make a difference. Oh and as it relates to Arsenal the study found that even if you e “not bad,” a new coach makes it worse.
Wait! You’re concerned that doesn’t relate to footie (or soccer) Ah, there was a study that looked at coaching changes in the Italian leagues and the result is consistent with that of the previous study. Mario De Paola and Vincenzo Scoppa published a study of coaching in Italian football in the Journal of Sports Economics. Like the study of US-based college coaching, the authors failed to find any evidence that changing the coach helps:
From our analysis, it emerges that coach replacement does not produce statistically significant effects on team performance. This result turns out both when we estimate the impact of coach change including among controls team fixed effects and when using a matching estimator, in which selection on the treatment depends on team performance in the latest rounds. This finding confirms results obtained by some recent studies (for example, Balduck & Buelens, 2007; Bruinshoofd & TerWeel, 2004)
Now, look this isn’t to say we should shy away from change. Nor is it conclusive that change will bring woe. I think you could argue that it’s more than likely given the perfect storm at Arsenal. We have an ingrained culture and the shadow of a presence that has defined the club for over 20 years. We have leadership that hasn’t set the vision and left that to one man.
I for one am worried and as much as I think Wenger should retire sooner rather than later, I believe his removal will mean a worse time for us than it is now.