RSSeNEWS to be determined...

Few highly paid football managers "have any effect on their teams’ performances", and "players’ salaries alone" determine success, according to Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski.

Writing in ft.com, Kuper repeated the duo's finding on the value of managers, first aired in their 2009 book 'Soccernomics'. Szymanski, a professor of economics at Cass Business School, found that the cost of English and Italian players’ salaries accounts for more than 90 per cent of the variation in their teams' league performance.

His conclusion was based on analysis of results over two decades. The relationship is less strong - around 70 per cent – over a single season when chance factors like injuries and refereeing errors have a marked effect.

Kuper comments that "whereas players are paid almost solely for their contribution to results, managers are paid more as marketing men".

And he cites research by Warwick Business School showing that changes in management often bring better results. This, says Kuper, offers a simple explanation. Usually, managers are sacked as a consequence of a string of poor results. Following this a team's performance "will probably regress to the mean", ie. improve.