From Zero(s) to Heroes?
Hands a-wrung at S6 over season's beginnings. Pointless - in more than one sense? In the past 30 years where did teams in our position after three matches end up in the table at the end of the season?
Things are getting tetchy. Among and between fans and between manager and local journalists. I’m very much on the same page as the excellent Tom Hunter in looking at the steps of growth we’ve taken in games rather than the absolute level we’re at right now.
Will we survive in the Championship as we are right now? No.
But, equally: Is it likely we’ll continue to be as we are right now through to May? No.
When will we be someone else, someone new, as Lou Reed sang on ‘Perfect Day’, then?
It’s tempting to dodge that question with a ‘time will tell’, but maybe we can glean something from history that makes us wiser as to how long improvements can and will take?
Changing manager is risky
Not The Top 20’s Huw Davies recently looked at the history of managerial appointments for teams relegated from the EPL (behind a pay wall, but highly recommended):
A recent trend has seen clubs relegated from the EPL change their manager that summer. Out of 21 such changes of manager, however, only 4 managed to win promotion straight back to the EPL.
1 in 5. 20%.
And that’s despite having squads brimming with ‘too good for the level’ players often sold for tens of millions as well as the relegation bonus sweetener of ~£40m in Parachute Payments from the EPL rather than the ~£5m ‘Solidarity Payment’ [sic(k)] other Championship clubs like Wednesday get instead.
Why is that relevant to Wednesday? Because a managerial change in the summer is full of risks, even for teams with a much better foundation, especially financial, than what we have at Wednesday this season.
Kompany’s overhaul at initially winless Burnley
Vincent Kompany joined Burnley on June 14, 2022 and set about one of the perhaps most dramatic changes in playing style: From Sean Dyche’s dogged rigidity that had kept the Burnley bumble bee afloat in the EPL far beyond what anyone could have expected to a more fluent, vibrant style. Something an English person would term ‘continental’ if being dismissive.
He won his first game, new style already on display, before July had even turned into August, but then didn’t win any of the next four. That was one year ago exactly and they found themselves 16th in the table, four points behind leaders and eventual co-promoted Sheffield United. In their next 41 games they would win 96 points - 2.34 per game.
‘Yeah, but EPL money coming out their ears, how on earth is that relevant to Wednesday?’ Because the job done by Kompany in helping Burnley achieve that should not be dismissed out of hand.
Kompany arrived with seven players out of contract and eventually 13 from the previous season leaving the club as well as the club’s owners sapping most of Burnley’s Parachute Payments paid up front to repay a ‘significant’ part of a £65m loan.
15 players were brought in - half of them from outside the UK - and £68m made on player sales to more than pay for a total outlay of around £25m. To integrate so many new players into a skeleton squad playing a very different sort of football just months before is no mean feat. To do it with such success resultswise too is nothing short of excellent.
Lessons in patience and understanding Muñoz’ badly dealt hand
The point is not that we can be Burnley. After all they did spend what we’ll likely have in revenue this season (£24m) several times over while our recruitment has been done frugally as I have written about before: A likely wage bill a tad higher than £13m is less than a million more than we spent on wages in our first League One season after relegation and would’ve put us bottom three in the 2021-2022 Championship.
The point is big shifts in style in a short space of time can happen without a deep valley of tears being necessary before a slug of an ascent to happier times. And, in fact, did also happen, when Muñoz took over Watford in December and won them promotion in May the following year.
There is another antecedent too: Our own Carlos Carvalhal, when he joined on June 30, 2015 also won the first game in charge - and then had no wins in the next five. And he even had the luxury of having the core of the previous season’s Stuart Gray team - Westwood, Loovens, Lees, Hutchinson, Lee, Nuhiu - among his regulars that season.
From taking charge June 14 it took Kompany 75 days to deliver win no. 2 with his Burnley team. For Carvalhal it was 82 days.
Muñoz has currently been employed for 53 days. He has had neither the luxury of Carvalhal, who took over a Championship side with a strong, defensive foundation already in place that had just finished 13th, nor of Kompany, whose £25m of transfers supercharged the changes he wanted and needed to make at Burnley last season. Kompany also had 44 days to prepare for the first game of the season to Muñoz’ 31 days this season.
What’s the precedent like for teams with our start?
Football, and football commentary, is rife with quick takes and snap judgements, with one podcast even going as far as calling a game on the second matchday of the EFL season ‘must win’ recently.
With social media as the ever-turning clamp, football is no different to public life in general, all compressed and frantic, leaving everyone either burning out from trying to keep a-pace or instead trying desperately to block out all the not so colourful noise.
It’s not hard to find definite statements about Wednesday’s full season after these first three games. 0 points, despite scoring both an opener and an equaliser, probably has a lot to do with that although haphazard performances haven’t exactly warranted much more.
I always find it interesting to examine some of the claims that are either spouted or act as premise for those abovementioned #HotTakes and #LiveReaction.
What, for instance, did the season end up like for teams in the Championship in the past 30 years who, like Wednesday, were either 24th or had 0 points after the first three matches?
Half the teams 24th after three matches were relegated
13 of 30 teams 24th after three matches - so around half - ended up relegated.
Two made what Dejphon Chansiri stated pre-season to be his expectation, Play-Offs, with finishes in 5th (2012-2013’s Crystal Palace, who even ended up winning promotion that way) and 6th (2000-2001’s WBA).
Half of the 24thers ended up winning between 43 and 55 points in their remaining 43 games:
1 in 3 with 0 points after 3 matches relegated
36 teams in those 30 seasons had 0 points after 3 matches.
13 - a third - were relegated.
One won the division (2006-2007’s Sunderland).
Three finished in the Play-Offs (as well as the 2012-2013’s Crystal Palace and 2000-2001’s WBA mentioned before 2021-2022’s Nottingham Forest, who, like Palace, also won the Play-Offs).
As many teams finished above 18th but below 6th as were relegated, 13.
Lessons?
I don’t want to wave off Wednesday’s bad start to the season. Performances. But the above is, I feel, context for where we are now starting from with 43 games to play.
The tall mountain we stand next to now will hopefully look more like a molehill when we make it to the end of the season and get enough distance to these games to not get too near-sighted looking at them.
Xisco Muñoz’ working conditions are hard. As I mentioned before he’s 53 days into his job. Neither Kompany’s Burnley last season nor 2015-2016’s Wednesday under Carvalhal would register their second wins of the season 75 and 82 days into their reigns respectively.
Muñoz, then, still has three to four weeks before reaching that point in time of Kompany’s and Carvalhal’s. And the conditions Muñoz has worked under have been worse than for either of the other two: No ressources (Kompany) and no solid foundation (Carvalhal) to build with and from.
Patience, process, promise - still!
There are green shots in Wednesday’s performances if not results as game by game we get closer to playing coherently, competently and in the way desired: Quick movement of and off the ball, aggression in trying to win it back in the opposition’s half, attempting to set up one on ones (like the rest of the division!). Both the eye test and the numbers say that albeit from a very low base.
After Cardiff tomorrow a gruelling set of fixtures awaits us, however: Apart from Swansea we’ll only play teams currently 25-1 or shorter to win the division for the next seven games:
There is more of a let up from the fixture list after we’ve reached 10 games played on October 3, though, with only Watford and Leicester of the following nine opponents being in that list of 25-1 or shorter to win the Championship (top 10 ranked teams).
As 2024 begins the fixture list looks more muddled, but the final 10 games only feature two teams (QPR, Swansea) with winners’ odds in the bottom third of the division, so it could be a tough old run of games to finish the season:
Kompany himself has said that a new style of play takes up to 100 training sessions to implement properly, which, with four to five sessions a week, is four to five months.
If we judge Muñoz after 10 games we’ve both had a comparatively harder fixture list than most others to win points from and the handicap of starting the job late, low initial squad numbers and attempting to change the style of play fundamentally. One of those makes things risky. Three at the same time exceedingly so.
Muñoz is short term pain for long(er) term gain
At the moment Muñoz and the players are investing games in being better and more effective later in the season. Short term pain, long(er) term gain.
We’ll never know if Darren Moore would’ve continued the unparticular, forceful style of play from League One after promotion. Opting to (attempt to) re-sign Reece James, Marvin Johnson and Callum Paterson is a suggestion the change in playing style, desired and actual, wouldn’t have been as wholesale as it has been.
It may well be, accustomed to operating that way, we would be, say, five points up on the points haul on a Muñoz Wednesday after 10-15 games, for instance. But that the ability to win points then decreased afterwards and a Muñoz Wednesday winning more than five points more than a Moore Wednesday would’ve in the final 30-35 matches. The net result being a higher likelihood of survival.
Muñoz is as much a victim of circumstance as anything else: A very late appointment; an uncustomarily frugal approach to recruitment; a strong desire for him to fundamentally change the style of play.
I’m doing my best to keep the faith that he carries out his transformation of our Wednesday. That the ugly duckling we sometime wince at seeing now will soon enough spread it’s glistening white swan wings soon enough. He’s still got time to do so - and he has done it once before at Watford.