AI managers - several years into the game

It was a sub-topic in another thread on the site, but the point is have other people noticed several years into the game, the AI managers no longer have the prowess to match the human user? Arsenal can quite easily go from near unbeatable under Wenger, losing only 1 or 2 games a season to becoming a side that struggle to challenge for the top 4, despite all the players having developed and having one of the best squads on the game.

On my save Arsenal are getting a mini-revitalisation, as are Man Utd because both this season have appointed managers who start on the game, Bernd Schuster and Steve Coppel respectively. Coppel isn't that great a manager on the game - having downloaded FMRTE - he has a CA of 132. Yet has taken a side thats languished around 11th - 15th in the table they are currently battling for 3rd/4th position in the league. Off the back of spending 14m on 6 players which has turned the team around.

It's now 2021, the last time they were able to challenge the top spots like this was in 2012 when they had Frank Rijkaard. Spaletti had a season in charge where they finished 6th but left for another club, and Ranieri had a season but didn't do much and retired.

Leeds are one of the premierships top teams, without ever having anyone who isn't a manager on the start of the game, their current manager is Jim Magilton and they occupy 3rd place. He has a PA of 147, they have spent rather prudently, built a good side with spending rarely exceeding 15m.

Man City have always been title contenders, the emerging pattern is as manager they've had Mark Hughes (were never that good under him, but still always up there) then hired Frank Rijkaard after he left, which led them to often be the top team asides from my own in the division, before now hiring Efrain Flores. Mark Hughes has a CA of 163, Frank Rijkaard has a CA of 193, Flores has a CA of 120 they only had 1 full summer under Rijkaard where spending was quite big (50m) but excellent players were bought. Flores came in and bought 40m of players, with none of them looking as good as those Rijkaard bought, and only one of them has made 10 appearances (sub appearances and cups included) so far come January.

Watford are another top 4 contender, for the last 6 seasons they've had Stale Solbakken in charge who has a CA of 159. In 2015/16 they survived the drop by 4 points, by 2018 they were challenging for top 4 spots. Chelsea had Flores for a number of years who masterminded their downfall. They now have Martin Ling who has a CA of 148 and he has stopped the slide and gotten them back to midtable.

Since Benitez left Liverpool in 2012, they went as far as dropping out of the premier league under player-turned manager Freddie Ljungberg. Having Mick Mccarthy and Alan Curbishley as managers leading up to it. They're now struggling in the premiership under Tony Mowbray, but it is their first season back up.

I'll curtail it there as I have to go out, but these have been the rather mild examples, when I touch on Spanish football shortly, it'll be about Benitez having been for a couple of years the only 'top' manager in spain, and his Real Madrid side amassing 400 goals in 2 seasons.

I guess SI need to do some balancing of manager attributes and how they affect behaviour and performance.

400 goals in 2 years???? :O

400 goals? Wow... Thank god i re-signed him as my number 2!

to the Opening Post, very weird on your side there. Im in 2030/2031 season and for many seasons Arsenal, Portsmouth & Fulham have been dominating the top 4 in the EPL. Always been like that for the 2-3 saves on FM09 I've had. In fact, Portsmouth just won the previous years European Champions League beating AC Milan in the final 2-1 after extra time.

I think FM should further implement a transfer policy for managers. That way Wenger wouldn't splash out huge funds on Ribery, Vagner Love etc, but instead go for younger players with potential. Likewise O'Neill going for British talent, Redknapp, Mourinho favouring players with good physical attributes.

Just a quick question, can you actually hire current managers as your Assistants?

Well Barcelona have reappointed Guardiola as manager, Athletico Madrid have signed Rijkaard as manager, Sevilla took Costacurta on as manager, Valencia took on Javi Lopez and Villareal picked up Mourinho (all within the last 12 - 18 months) and Real Madrid have gone from being untouchable in their league to currently second. Still doing well under Benitez, but now he has managers with CA's of:

Guardiola - 170

Rijkaard - 193

Costacurta - 143

Mourinho - 187

Lopez - 131

But goals scored during the years Benitez had no other managers who were above CA's of 120 competing with him:

2017/2018 224 scored, 21 conceded (won 38)

2018/2019 255 scored, 23 conceded (won 38)

Barcelona hired Guardiola, and one or two other of the listed managers came in during this season:

2019/2020 145 scored, 34 conceded (won 29)

Roma were dominating italian football for years, sacked Casiraghi (CA of 180) and hired Zambrotta in his place, who has a CA of 130. Failing to win the league title in the 3 years since.

Teams like Juventus, Barcelona, Athletico Madrid, Man Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea have all suffered enormously from appointing managers with CA's of like 130 and below.

I did a search, and with a CA of 175 or above managers, bearing in mind I'm not sure well the filter works on FMRTE, there was only a few managers in the game above 175.

Started up a new game to see how many were in it, and there were 7, with various other managers with the potential to get there in time like Rijkaard etc who starts the game on 170.

Between 150 - 174, which like players I'd say was where the majority of premiership level managers would be where you expect to find them, there's currently 77 on my game, the vast majority of which are Brazilian coaches, managing in the lower echelons of Brazil (20 are Brazillian). It is closer than I expected, but so many of these coaches are at little sides, the only big teams here or reasonably big are: Inter (Mark Hughes), Real Madrid (Benitez), CSKA Moscow (manager called Min'ko), Arsenal (Schuster), Marseille (Etchart), Tottenham (Simon Grayson), Liverpool (Tony Mowbray).

I did check for the likes of Flamengo, Boca, and any teams like Belgrade who I've seen listed in champions league fixtures etc so out of 77 reasonbly good managers, only 7 are at big clubs.

On a fresh game - 84 - bearing in mind a lot of the younger managers will hit this level as the game progresses. However the clubs here are: Valencia, Barcelona, Olympiakos, Porto, Benfica, Rangers, Celtic, Marseille, Deportivo, Flamengo, Bordeaux, Lyon, Zenit, Dortmund, Spartak Moscow, Fiorentina, Roma, Wigan, Everton, Villa, Tottenham, Sao Paulo, Palmeiras, Hoffenheim, Werder Bremen, CSKA Moscow, AZ Alkmaar, Juventus, Sampdoria, Shaktar, Wolfsburg, Corinthians, River Plate, Osasuna.

So that's 7 for the future game, 34 for the present. So, the game does still produce competent managers to a degree, whilst there was decline there was still enough there but clubs are failing to recruit them.

Anyway, as a final comparison, premiership managers 2008 vs premiership managers 2021.

Wenger - 175

O'Neill - 167

Allardyce - 145

Megson - 106

Hiddink - 170

Moyes - 165

Hodgson - 148

Brown - 130

Benitez - 178

Hughes - 145

Ferguson - 188

Southgate - 135

Kinnear - 110

Hart - 160

Pulis - 130

Sbragia - 125

Redknapp - 156

Mowbray - 140

Zola - 106

Bruce - 150

Average CA of 146.45

Obviously at Stoke I have to discount my own CA/PA in the premiership. So there will only be 19 listed.

Flores - 120

Magilton - 147

Coppell - 132

Solbakken - 159

Schuster - 154

Ling - 148

Johnson - 123

Banfield - 144

Riise - 130

Ljungberg - 130

Orsi - 119

Simpson - 134

Kaiser - 138

Mowbray - 149

Galindo - 136

Alonso - 131

Grayson - 169

Malpas - 113

Average CA of 130.31

I think the one saving grace is the bad managers are better than the bad managers at the start of the game, but only 3 premiership managers are now above 150 CA, compared to 9 before.

To be honest, that is exactly what I'd expect.

Think about it - the "established" managers are vastly experienced professional football managers, whilst the regens are just starting out.

You'll find the longer the game progresses, regen managers improve and you get some absolute whoppers.

Well the only manager who is truly great on my game is Rijkaard but he has actually achieved very little. 12 years is enough time for managers to develop, and enough time for one or two potential greats to come through but that doesn't seem to happen. But it's not just that which is a problem, I think the problem was mainly touched on with managers in the 150 - 175 bracket, not the likes of Ferguson and the all time greats, but top managers. Only 7 'big' clubs around the world having these good managers when there is 77 available, compared to 34 out of 84. If more of these 'good' managers were in the top leagues, then surely they would be more competitive, and the clubs would be less prone to the frivilous and foolish spending they currently embark upon.

this is an interesting read it is nice to know that once i hit 2020 i can totally dominate my league >

but then probably have a bit of a challenge by about 2030 as regen manager get a lot better or is that incorrect :S

Well tonight, I'm gonna stick my save game on holiday until the morning or over the next couple of days to try and get it to 2030 - 2035 hopefully, either that or someone who has a save their uploads it and I'll look through that one as well.

But yea, my stoke team destroy the premiership now, and with each passing season are scoring more because with each passing season the managers are getting worse.

I wonder whether a factor to the lack of managers in the 150 - 175 bracket being appointed is down to reputation. Maybe the AI chairman do not recognise potential enough to give lesser rep managers a chance in a higher division. And this then stops a 'stepping stone' effect of seeing managers gradually move up to bigger clubs.

It may be one of the problems, Martin Ling and Simon Grayson are premiership managers now on the game, but have worked their way up through the leagues. The vast majority of these managers are plying their trade at part time sides in Brazil, eastern europe etc. There was only 5 English managers in the bracket though, obviously it would be rediculous for AI chairmen to be able to pick a world class manager from the lower echelons of Brazilian football, but at the same time, there should be something where they're willing to be given a chance in their domestic countries, or something along those lines to work up to being appointed at this level. Freddie Ljungberg on my game is a terrible manager, he got sacked from Scunthorpe in league 1, Liverpool in the premiership, Seattle in the MLS and is now Blackpool manager. He has a CA of 130 which isn't too bad, but there are many better candidates out there they are completely oblivious to.

I think boards select managers based on reputation rather than CA

To a large extent this is understandable and realistic - whereas you can tell whether a player is likely to make the grade at a club simply by watching them kick a ball about a bit, the only way you can guess whether a manager is likely to be a success at a club is to look at who they've managed recently (or their reputation as a player if you like taking gambles). I'm sure there are managers lurking in the lower leagues who are far better spotters of talent and tacticians than the average Premiership manager, even if they don't have the instant reputation of their Premiership counterparts.

They certainly shouldn't be paying too much attention to wage demands when selecting their manager though....

It's quite hard to find managers on over 10k a week even at some of the top clubs. And reputation is factoring in it seems, but these managers should be getting reputations raising or something, I suspect it may be down to leagues active, obviously no one can have all the leagues in the game active, so these managers are remaining anonymous, as do players generally.

There needs to be a way to compensate for it, because ultimately if the level of AI managers is going down, then the game is always going to lose its challenging nature. I think the spanish leagues show the extremities of whats possible in a league where no good managers were at the other big teams there and only one manager really building a team.

I take it 200+ goals a season the last 2 seasons is including all competitions right ? surely not just the Premier League

santy001 - thanks very much for taking the time to do this research!

Your findings match my observations - I remember one particularly vivid save where Manchester United sacked Ferguson early in their second season, and basically didn't contend for years thereafter. When they finally did pick up a manager with capability, they failed to recognize him as such.

They hired him the season after a 12th-place finish, if I recall, with the side sitting somewhere 14th-16th in the table at the end of January. He rallied them to a 10th-place finish, but also managed to qualify for Europe by winning the F.A. Cup outright. The next season, after some shrewd summer transfers, he had them second, just six points behind an all-conquering Chelsea side looking for their fifth title in succession, alive in all competitions .. and got the sack around Christmas.

This struck me as being a clear reputation problem: the side's reputation read "title challenger", and the board hadn't caught up with the fact that they weren't, and hadn't been, lately. I think the fans would have absolutely been in love with him, and the board would certainly have been seeing a much greater reward for their investment than they had on any previous manager: he'd have had more time, for certain ... however, I suspect that his reputation-growth wasn't in line with the achievements he'd made, and that the board weren't cutting him slack for what he'd inherited.

I wonder whether a factor to the lack of managers in the 150 - 175 bracket being appointed is down to reputation. Maybe the AI chairman do not recognise potential enough to give lesser rep managers a chance in a higher division. And this then stops a 'stepping stone' effect of seeing managers gradually move up to bigger clubs.

Precisely. Given what santy001 observed regarding the save-game having the proper number of managers with that CA, just that most of them are languishing in the lower divisions, seems to support that observation.

It may be one of the problems, Martin Ling and Simon Grayson are premiership managers now on the game, but have worked their way up through the leagues. The vast majority of these managers are plying their trade at part time sides in Brazil, eastern europe etc. There was only 5 English managers in the bracket though, obviously it would be rediculous for AI chairmen to be able to pick a world class manager from the lower echelons of Brazilian football, but at the same time, there should be something where they're willing to be given a chance in their domestic countries, or something along those lines to work up to being appointed at this level. Freddie Ljungberg on my game is a terrible manager, he got sacked from Scunthorpe in league 1, Liverpool in the premiership, Seattle in the MLS and is now Blackpool manager. He has a CA of 130 which isn't too bad, but there are many better candidates out there they are completely oblivious to.

The Ljunberg example is a good one; in the same save-game I was describing, the previous Man U manager should never have been given a chance at Man U: I'd personally noticed him come in, take over, and sink something like four clubs in succession prior to getting the Man U position .. and all with continuously increasing reputations. Taking a promotion-contending Championship side down to mid-table earned him a Premiership position; he then took a weakly established Premiership side and got them relegated; that earned him a top-top Aston Villa job, whom he turned into relegation battlers; that earned him the UEFA-Cup-qualified Man U job, which he sunk to 12th and then worse the following season.

It didn't make sense to me that after clear failures at each level, his reputation had obviously increased, giving him an improved position the next time; it wasn't like he was garnering anything that ought to be considered a success for any of the teams along the way!

So if that aspect is broken, I wonder if there are knock-on effects?

Regarding the Brazilian managers in your game, santy - is Brazil First Division an active (playable) league, in your game? If not, that may be the problem: the Brazil AI chairmen would be more active about picking up Brazilian high-CA coaches from lower-division Brazil clubs if they were active, and that might have led to those managers transitioning to Europe eventually.

I wonder if another potential patch to this would be simply improving the selection-quality for some of the chairmen: e.g., the best chairmen recognize a combination of reputation and CA, while middling chairmen recognize reputation only?

Ideas. Who else has good ones?

It was the spanish equivalent, and they were the goal totals just in the league over 38 games. Actual totals I don't know, bear in mind I've never managed in the spanish leagues etc merely just had it loaded because its one of the leagues I load by default. As you can see though, with no real changes in the league, other than the other clubs actually hiring half decent managers again real madrids goal total began to decline, to the point where in the current season they aren't top of the league. This is only the second season with managers with the CA to suggest they can compete with Benitez, and they are.

The brazil leagues aren't active I'd read at the time there was some problems I think so when starting this game I omitted it from the league selection. I did touch upon the theme perhaps it was the active leagues limiting the amount of managers that made it to the top end of the game.

But yea, Ljungberg is now at Blackpool who are a relatively stable premiership side, around mid-table. They're now in a relegation battle on my game, without clarification on some of the mechanics relating to things like managerial appointments, it will be hard to understand why it happens. It is imperative to a long term game, that this is addressed in some ways but by this time a lot of clubs will have changed chairmen as well, which in turn brings its own issues regarding some recruitment. It's rather easy to sit here and suggest putting in stats that each chairman can guage a potential managers CA and PA.

Some of the knock on effects as a result of poor manager replacements could be coaching staff, I'm not sure how staff recruitment works for AI teams. But I can imagine if the manager there is not as good, then the staff he hires consequentially won't be as good, furthering the deterioration of teams. Liverpool didn't go down on my game due to financial problems, it was purely down to poor buying and selling decisions, given the managers they had, poorer coaches coming in would have meant even worse displays on the pitch.

On my save I decided to resign and see who the Chairman replaces me with, Stoke are the biggest club on the game, with one of the best sides as well as largest bank balances after numerous years of success. Fifteen of the staff members left the club as well, including the assistant manager, so it leaves a large scope of which for change to be made, gives a small opportunity to see what happens on both fronts.

I extra small contribution. I think that whatever level you start off as the human manager (Sunday league, International,, amateur team or Man U) you start with a CA of 100. However well you achieve, your CA increases very slowly. I'm currently in my 4th season, I've won the EPL, FA Cup and Europa League, and my CA is only 113.

Therefore, the effect of the CAs of other top managers decreasing is that in a reasonable time-frame (say, a decade) you can match them for CA.

Interesting observations, both of you!

Andy, I guess I'd always imagined that we had a PA of 200 and would shoot towards that relatively quickly as players do .. it never occurred to me to even consider what you were looking at there.

santy, great thought on the chairmen, another blind spot I wasn't even considering. Please keep the fantastic ideas coming!

The game Inserts us into the database with a variable starting Reputation, determined by experience level chosen, and a fixed ca/pa of 100/200 which only takes 2-3 years to max out. AI managers have fixed a ca/pa and a fixed starting reputation level that is either determined by SI initially or by the game for 'regen' staff.

Club Boards seem to base thier manage hiring decisions entirely on reputation, ability or lack thier of doesnt appear to me be a limiting factor.

Without biasing selection for plaver-managers over the AI-managers I don't see how SI can balance the boards deciding routines, because if SI include CA/PA in the decision making process then we as non-ai managers recieve a clear advantage, it's not a problem I would like to have to provide a solution for ...........

"a fixed ca/pa of 100/200 which only takes 2-3 years to max out"

As I mentioned above, I pretty sure it doesn't. The human managers' CA increase very gradually. Do you have evidence (thro' Genie or FMRTE) to the contrary?

I do have evidence of manager CA changing, Frank Rijkaard started this save I'm on now with a CA of 170, by 2020 he has a CA of 193. Managers do develop, Tony Mowbray went from being beneath a bit beneath the 150 bracket, to being one point off at liverpool with a CA of 149.

Mark Hughes is also rated very highly, despite never winning much of anything, it does seem to progress, but a lot of managers are limited by their PA, obviously all managers are limited by their potential, but being a manager is entirely different to a player, working with better coaches and managers, improves your ability to a degree, and increases your potential.

During the course of today, I'll have a look at some of the appointments made by these staff, I did resign, and skipped forward too months, but my shooting coach got made caretaker manager, and he was 7 stars. He destroyed 6 teams in a row with over 10 goals, his CA is 170 with a PA of 173. I'm going to reload, fire him and see what the club does from there lol. It was exactly like watching the Spanish league from the outside again he only has 2 managers I'd really put down as being able to compete with him, Grayson is at relegation candidates so his side are automatically going to find it much harder, and Solbakken's watford side the team didn't play.

Edited in:

After sacking him, the club went straight for Frank Rijkaard. Started quite well under him and won 6-0 in their first match. But that's as good as it got, he changed the team to a 4-5-1 and ditched Keirrison and Gildo, the clubs 2 best strikers and plays the third choice upfront, he's managed to lose one but not had any money to spend, so I'm going to holiday through to the summer to see what happens then. Was nice to see the chairman made a decent effort at recruiting both times. This does raise a few more questions though, such as what chairmans stats play a role in it, he's now recruited in both trial runs 2 pretty decent managers, he bucks the trend of some recent tycoons in management lol.

Stats are:

CA 105

PA 139

Chairmen stats

Business 19 (possibly relates to chairmens ability to spot managers?)

Interference 20

Patience 2

Resources 20

Reputation

Home 9862

Current 9891

World 4931

Personality

Adaptability 13

Ambition 20 (again potentially relates to chairmens ability to go after good managers?)

Loyalty 10

Pressure 7

Professionalism 8

Sportsmanship 16

Temperament 6

Controversy 5

Play on longer, you will find the regens get better.

Ex-players go on to become great managers too, I have seen Frank Lampard, Rafael Marquez, Ciro Ferrara all become greats.

I have even seen regen players now managing clubs.

If you or anyone who's read this, has a save another 10 years or so, on from mine I'd gladly look through it, because it gives more varied information to look at it all with. It's unlikely anything will directly come about due to this, but if amaroq is the person I think he is from memory, he may be in a position to point it out to a few people higher at SI at some point down the line.

I know this is slightly off topic from the first post, but in my experience the "big four" tend to lose their grip too quickly, hiring terrible managers (Coppell at Man U, as above) that would never get a sniff IRL.

I've seen more than one save where only 1 of the 4 is in EUROPE, never mind CL, after three seasons. This has been the case in FM as long as I can remember - all the while the big four in real life have gained a bigger and bigger hold on the CL places. I know Spurs have come very close a couple of times, maybe Man City will in a couple of years, but that's an odd one anyway.

I think the game fails to model the domination of the big four enough, tbf, and the teams management goes downhill too fast. On my games Wenger almost always gets sacked within 12months, with Arsenal languishing about 12th. You would, I guess, expect a big four team in trouble at say Christmas to spend (especially if they have terrible injury problems), and spend big, to get back in the top four, for the CL places.

Anyway, just my thoughts - anyone else?

Well this is what it comes down to, if Arsenal get rid of wenger before the team comes to fruition, they do tend to fall to pieces. Man Utd, Chelsea and Liverpool are terrible at appointing managers and this is what the thread is aimed at looking at.

Interesting thread…… some good research Santy001.

I really do hope SI spend some time fixing this problem for FM10, we desperately need better manager AI, the long term games are slightly off putting, with the knowledge of knowing within 8-10 seasons things start to get to easy.

Given that we're rapidly closing in on the latter stages of FM10's development, it would be unlikely to be out in the first version but could be patched in. It's something that is hard to judge really and the only thing that's made it more noticable to me is that with each passing season my team is scoring more and more obscene amounts of goals, and realising real madrid had already done it before I began looking for similarities.

I'm looking through other saves I've got at around the same point and the situation is reflected there as well.

Realistically, I'm not expecting any change for FM'10. I'd be pleasantly surprised if they address it in patches, but my goal in asking you to kick off the thread - and many thanks for the detail and effort you've put into it! - was to get it on the radar when they are selecting the feature list for FM'11 .. which they are doing somewhere between now and October, I don't know with any precision beyond that.

I don't think we can start talking about patches and what not until FM10 has actually come out and this has been tested again. Because for all we know, this may well have been something SI have already noticed and improved. Fingers crossed

only thing i've noticed is when an AI manager takes over from you i left my QUB N.Irish league champions and best team by far only for the AI manager to loose all the good players i have and sign alot of bad players

I'm quite sure chairmen appoint managers based purely on reputation. In the 9.0.3 (I think) db a lower-league French manager accidently has a world reputation of 170 instead of 17 which causes him to be hired by big clubs in the game.

It does seem to be the conclusion many people have come to, and I too doubted there would be anything for FM10 as it would require a lot of changing, but we saw that with the coach changes in 9.3.0 which was quite nice that a bigger change than anticipated occured. Still I won't hold my breath on it being in fm10 because to make sure its working right it's going to need a lot of testing on the game in 10 - 20 years time.

Lee, that probably happened because in northern ireland, the managers available to clubs are of a much reduced quality, so very poor managers will be likely to come in to replace users there, meaning that a lot of the good work is undone.

This is a really interesting thread, and I'd like to add some observations on various different methods of appointing managers observed in RL. Could these be modelled in the game?

Clubs who appoint managers based on potential - my own team, Leicester City, have a history of this, and it can work very well: our renaissance in the 1990s was set in motion by Brian Little and brought to fruition by Martin O'Neill. Little had no experience above the fourth tier when we appointed him; O'Neill had had a couple of months in the second tier at Norwich and had already fallen out with the chairman there. We also demonstrated the pitfalls of this approach when appointing Peter Taylor, who was promoted far above his competence zone. More recent examples include Blackburn appointing Paul Ince, and Wigan going for Roberto Martinez. Another risk of this approach can be an ambitious manager quickly moving on - Brendan Rodgers from Watford to Reading, Ince from MK Dons to Blackburn after a year in each case. High risk, high reward.

Clubs appointing experienced managers to 'do a job' - managers seem to settle to what might be termed a 'reputation level'; for instance, Steve Bruce is an established Premier manager, Neil Warnock an acknowledged Championship boss, Micky Adams and Ronnie Moore respected lower division bosses. These managers tend to be in the mix for jobs at their given level but rarely break out of it except by their own efforts - if Tony Pulis messes up at Stoke and gets the boot, it's unlikely that he'll get a Prem offer, he's operating above his perceived 'level'.

Clubs fast-tracking famous ex-players - these often have some sort of connection with the club concerned e.g. Shearer, Southgate, van Basten. But not necessarily - Tony Adams at Portsmouth. A player's renown can lead to them being cut a lot of slack in management, Bryan Robson being the most obvious example.

Big-name managers - increasingly, the biggest clubs are no longer satisfied with appointing the best-looking young manager from their own nation and head-hunt foreign coaches with international or Champions' League experience. Spurs are the most interesting recent example - they tried this twice, then panicked when things appeared to be going badly wrong and reverted to an English 'do a job' appointment with 'arry.

Continuity appointments - club loses totemic manager so attempts to keep things stable by appointing the assistant or other backroom staff member. Sammy Lee at Bolton, Avram Grant at Chelsea, Chris Hutchings following Paul Jewell at Bradford (and Wigan? Can't remember). These often don't go well in this country, but I think can fare better abroad.

Imaginative appointments - Fulham remember a bloke called Roy Hodgson. Didn't do too well last time he was in England, but what the hey. Bolton notice that Gary Megson is back in management. Why not make him an offer? These often cross over with the international manager approach - you could cite Tigana at Fulham, Jansen at Celtic and Souness at Galatasaray as examples here.

Sorry if this long post has bored you or is stating the blindingly obvious. What I wonder is could chairmen be modelled, not just to have a talent-spotting attribute, but to have preferences for particular types of appointment? Obviously these would interact with the circumstances of the club they are at. It seems to me that this would be more desirable and realistic than chairmen appointing managers just on reputation, CA or PA.