FAO Ken

[noughtyforties]

I thought you handled the piece on The Fat Cheating Jock Bastard well in the programme and found it hilarious he was 22nd most successful manager in our history. However this raised a few good points from those around me.

1. Who is our most successful manager % wise? My guess is Don Donovan.

2. Taking away TFCJB's return, where would he have been if based on non league results?

3. Is there a list of Success? Who is the worst?

Thanks in anticipation!

[Ken Fox]

That's going to be the subject of the last one in the series. I'm planning on doing a statistical summary of the performances of all Boston United's managers. So it should be appearing in one of the playoff programmes as there will be at least one more home game after today's excellent win.

The piece will be based around the following spreadsheet table. It's fairly self-explanatory.

[noughtyforties]

The lesson in your stats seems to be joint managers work.....!

Thanks for the quick reply and surely we've next week v Vauxhall AND a play off game?

[Ken Fox]

Thanks for the quick reply and surely we've next week v Vauxhall AND a play off game?

Indeed. The original plan was for just one more piece for the Vauxhall Motors game, but I could need two more if the playoffs go well. So now it's probably Bolland & Taylor for VM, and the statistical summary for the home playoff game with Willie Vaughton in reserve if required.

[leicester pilgrim]

Interesting stats, Ken.

For the sake of putting these into context, I've quickly computed United's overall record across all managers. Based on these figures, this reads:

Played 3,767
Won 1,772 (47%)
Drawn 811 (22%)
Lost 1,185 (31%)

Thus anyone from Jimmy Cringan upwards is officially above average, whilst everyone from John Froggatt downwards is below average.

It's a shame that Arthur Mann and Neil Thompson are the bottom two, as both were very highly respected for the jobs they did. Arthur Mann took us to Wembley and remains part of club folklore because of that, whilst Neil Thompson took on the job at a very difficult time and deserves some credit.

Are there any figures available for goals scored and conceded under each of the managers?

Does anyone keep track of how many fixtures Boston have played? Within the next five season's we'll (hopefully) play our 4,000th club fixture. It would be good if that kind of milestone could be recognised.

Very minor point, Ken, (and sorry for being pedantic) but there's something wrong with the figures for Fred Tunstall. 181 wins + 59 draws + 174 defeats should come to 414 and not 413?

Technically as well, didn't we win three trophies under Scott & Hurst (and not two)? There was the Unibond Challenge Cup, the Lincolnshire Senior Shield and the Play-off Trophy. I remember seeing the three trophies side-by-side at the end of season presentations.

[Ken Fox]

Slight word of warning. The tables don't quite cover all Boston United's games as I've not included caretaker managers such as Chris Cook between Greg Fee and Steve Evans or Crazee Jimmy between Neil Thompson and Steve Evans.

I'm also missing a few games from my archives such as 3 Eastern Professional Floodlit League games in 1970/1 and 2 Boston & District League games in 1964/5.

I'm sometimes a bit cautious about including obscure cups such as the Culey Cup, the Spalding Butchers RAFA Invitation Cup, the Unibond League Playoff Trophy (especially as the club smashed it when the shelf holding it collapsed!).

[noughtyforties]

I think most of us would prefer it based on league games only.

Cups are a bit of a distraction, its the league you are judged on.

As Richard says, we must soon be getting up towards 4,000 league games now as Boston Utd, be nice to see that milestone celebrated in some way.

[Ken Fox]

I've been playing with my spreadsheets all day and I've managed to add some extra columns onto the table. So you can now see the Average Goals For & Against per game and the Number of Players Used by each manager.

I've also corrected a few mistakes and probably introduced a few new ones!

Here's the new table:

[noughtyforties]

Look at the ridiculous number of players used by McFraud in his scattergun signing policy.......no wonder we were fcuked when he left!

[Lord Cutler Knobhead]

Look at the ridiculous number of players used by McFraud in his scattergun signing policy.......no wonder we were fcuked when he left!

Indeed, Tunstall was manager for 3 times the amount of time and used the same amount of players.

[Pilgrim86]

Look at the ridiculous number of players used by McFraud in his scattergun signing policy.......no wonder we were fcuked when he left!

Using "new players per game", Evans was at 0.57, whereas Scott and Hurst made it to 0.60 (216 players if they had made it 361 games like Evans)

[Boo]

Torture the statistics long enough and they'll admit to anything.

[leicester pilgrim]

Look at the ridiculous number of players used by McFraud in his scattergun signing policy.......no wonder we were fcuked when he left!

Indeed, Tunstall was manager for 3 times the amount of time and used the same amount of players.

I don't want to defend the indefensible and Evans did use a ridiculous number of players. I'm not sure a comparison with Tunstall is fair though.  For the bulk of Evans' squads he would have had to name eleven players plus five substitutes. Useage of those subs in various permutations would have swelled the overall count of players used. I don't think substitutes actually came into the game until after Tunstall's spell as manager. And even if they did, it would have only been one sub per game.

[Ken Fox]

I don't want to defend the indefensible and Evans did use a ridiculous number of players. I'm not sure a comparison with Tunstall is fair though.  For the bulk of Evans' squads he would have had to name eleven players plus five substitutes. Useage of those subs in various permutations would have swelled the overall count of players used. I don't think substitutes actually came into the game until after Tunstall's spell as manager. And even if they did, it would have only been one sub per game.

There's a counter argument as well in that Freddy Tunstall had four spells as manager - each in a different decade, whereas Evans only had two spells. So Freddy had to start from scratch with a new set of players four times.

Rather than concentrating on the high end - the other end is much more amazing to me. Don Donovan managed to use just 34 players during his four seasons in charge - truly amazing - although they were rather special.

[AlbertBroadbent]

I'm also missing a few games from my archives such as 3 Eastern Professional Floodlit League games in 1970/1 and 2 Boston & District League games in 1964/5.

Here's one of the results you are missing:

Wednesday 21st April 1971 H E KING'S LYNN 1-1

See: http://www.thelinnets.co.uk/archive/archiveresults.php?s=1970-71
which will also give you the attendance of the previous weeks' game.