Amorim’s first game for Man Utd: Does the ‘new manager bounce’ actually exist?

The new boss of the red side of Manchester will be hoping that a new football tradition smiles upon his team to lift the club from a record slump.

Since the departure of Sir Alex Ferguson in 2013, there has been a veritable manager merry-go-round at Old Trafford. The latest to take the hot seta, Portuguese coach Ruben Amorim, faces his first challenge on 24 November against lowly Ipswich Town.

Whenever a new manager is appointed in the Premier League, media talk surrounds the so-called ‘new manager bounce.’

The story behind this phenomenon is that the appointment of a new boss, regardless of who they are and their acumen, automatically lifts the results of the team. Particularly important for teams teetering on the brink of relegation, United’s league position of 12th means such a boost would be greatly appreciated by fans.

While the bounce is oft-discussed, even used in official league promotions, but does it actually exist?

The stats behind the new manager bounce

In order to work out whether the appointment of new manager has a bounce or not, we have to set the parameters of what a bounce is. For the purpose of this short investigation, we will use the five results before and after a permanent managerial appointment since the beginning of the 2022/2023 season. Only changes mid-season will count, as it would need to be some bounce to carry over from May to August, and a manger being fired must have taken place. All statistics were provided by Transfermarkt.

In that time there were 15 permanent managerial appointments, with only three mid-season changes since 2023/24 season started. Of these 14, Potter wasn’t sacked by Brighton, in more than two-thirds of cases there was a points improvement after a new coach; each team was an average of 3.5 points better off.

The pace of manager sackings increased at towards the end of the season, with teams towards the bottom of the table hoping to seize upon these points increases. Of the three relegated teams in the 2022/2023 season, only Leicester saw a small increase in points (five versus one) but were relegated anyway. Their manager Dean Smith was given just eight games to turn fortunes around, while also relegated Leeds gave Sam Allardyce just four games, picking up a single point.

There are limits to a bounce’s importance. Just because there was no in initial ‘bounce’ doesn’t mean a managerial change was a failure and an early enough change means the new boss has time to implement their ideas. 11 of the 14 changes also had a better points-per-game ratio than their predecessors, showing that often a change in manager will improve the team over a long-term period as well as giving an initial lift.

For example, Crystal Palace changed Roy Hodgson for Oliver Glasner in January. Depsite an initial poor run of just five points in five games, two less than in Hodgson’s final five games, Glasner’s Palace went unbeaten in the last seven games of the season, winning six.

Erik ten Hag, Manchester United’s former head coach, finished his stint with a 1.22 points-per-game ratio with just five points from their last five games. Amorim will be hoping to see this famous bounce in action and treat United fans to a gift before Christmas.