Is it right to assume that midfielders have more tactical knowledge than the rest of the team? And is it right to assume that there is more manager potential in a midfield player?
It is a hard task to find out what position current managers preferred to play in their professional playing careers. But I have done the research on the English Premier League Managers of today's teams. Most of the data is from Wikipedia.
*P.P. is short for preferred position. Managers without p.p. have no or very short professional playing career.
The expected proportion of midfielders should be calculated in order to do any comparison. A simple (and perhaps not right) way to do this, is to take look at the most preferred playing systems and count the midfielders. Without any references, I have chosen following systems (4-4-2, 4-5-1, 3-5-2, 4-3-3), which I hope is representative of the game 10-30 years ago.
I have calculated the expected proportions without weighing the systems. For example, the expected proportion of midfielders is summed over the systems (4+5+5+3)/44 = 0.3864.
A proportion test, 8 of 17 being equal to 0.3864 gives a p-value of 0.6428 (CI: 0.2386-0.7147), clearly accepting the hypothesis of equal proportion, which means that midfielders aren't more likely to become managers than other players.
Proportion test of the 4 counts against the expected proportions is done with Pearson's chi-squared goodness of fit test, and gives a p-value of 0.8927, indicating that the playing position distribution is highly expected. The sample size is of course too small to draw any final conclusions and the assumptions of the test is not really fulfilled, but the results so far, give very strong indications.
What about captains? Are they more likely to become managers than non-captains? The expected proportion of captain players I will set to 1/11, other estimates are very welcome. Proportion test, 5 of 17 being equal to 1 of 11 gives a p-value of 0.0127 (CI: 0.1138-0.5595) indicating that captains are more likely to become managers than non-captain players.
It is a hard task to find out what position current managers preferred to play in their professional playing careers. But I have done the research on the English Premier League Managers of today's teams. Most of the data is from Wikipedia.
| Team | Manager | Highest League | P.P. | Captain |
| Arsenal | Arsene Wenger | |||
| Aston Villa | Paul Lambert | First div. Germany | CDM | Lower league |
| Chelsea | Roberto Di Matteo | First div. England | CDM | No |
| Everton | David Moyes | Third div. England | CD | No |
| Fulham | Martin Jol | First div. England | OCM | No |
| Liverpool | Brendan Rodgers | |||
| Manchester City | Roberto Mancini | First div. Italy | F | No |
| Manchester United | Sir Alex Ferguson | First div. Scotland | F | No |
| Newcastle United | Alan Pardew | First div. England | CM | No |
| Norwich City | Chris Hughton | First div. England | LD | No |
| Queens Park Rangers | Mark Hughes | First div. England | F | No |
| Reading | Brian McDermott | First div. England | RM | No |
| Southampton | Nigel Adkins | Third div. England | GK | No |
| Stoke City | Tony Pulis | Second div. England | CD | No |
| Sunderland | Martin O'Neill | First div. England | CM | National team |
| Swansea City | Michael Laudrup | First div. Spain | OCM | National team |
| Tottenham Hotspur | Andre Villas-Boas | |||
| West Bromwich Albion | Steve Clarke | First div. England | RD | No |
| West Ham United | Sam Allardyce | First div. England | CD | Lower league |
| Wigan Athletic | Roberto Martinez | Third div. England | CDM | Yes |
The expected proportion of midfielders should be calculated in order to do any comparison. A simple (and perhaps not right) way to do this, is to take look at the most preferred playing systems and count the midfielders. Without any references, I have chosen following systems (4-4-2, 4-5-1, 3-5-2, 4-3-3), which I hope is representative of the game 10-30 years ago.
I have calculated the expected proportions without weighing the systems. For example, the expected proportion of midfielders is summed over the systems (4+5+5+3)/44 = 0.3864.
| Position | Count | Percent | Expected |
| Goal Keeper | 1 | 5,88 | 9,09 |
| Defender | 5 | 29,41 | 34,09 |
| Midfielder | 8 | 47,06 | 38,64 |
| Forward | 3 | 17,65 | 18,18 |
| 17 | 100,00 | 100,00 |
A proportion test, 8 of 17 being equal to 0.3864 gives a p-value of 0.6428 (CI: 0.2386-0.7147), clearly accepting the hypothesis of equal proportion, which means that midfielders aren't more likely to become managers than other players.
Proportion test of the 4 counts against the expected proportions is done with Pearson's chi-squared goodness of fit test, and gives a p-value of 0.8927, indicating that the playing position distribution is highly expected. The sample size is of course too small to draw any final conclusions and the assumptions of the test is not really fulfilled, but the results so far, give very strong indications.
What about captains? Are they more likely to become managers than non-captains? The expected proportion of captain players I will set to 1/11, other estimates are very welcome. Proportion test, 5 of 17 being equal to 1 of 11 gives a p-value of 0.0127 (CI: 0.1138-0.5595) indicating that captains are more likely to become managers than non-captain players.
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