I normally take very little notice of message board debates but in the last week or so I’ve been alerted to some rather heated discussions about the current state of the Saddlers, writes Saddlers blogger Mark Jones.

At the moment a few people are, as my Nan would say, a little bit vexed.

Of course the recent string of disappointing results, poor form and some worrying individual performances are a concern for all of us but some of the conclusions being drawn at the moment are truly staggering.

One thread which has really caught my eye, posted by someone called Bernie, involves a comparison of points per game achieved by each manager since the dawn of the Bescot era. I don’t know Bernie, so apologies to him (or her) as I’ve reproduced it below. It makes interesting reading.

I don’t actually have permission to do this from anyone at UTS, but then again it’s only data and if it bothers anyone they can always contact me via my pseudonym.

So there you have it, everything you need to know to help you form an opinion on the current manager. Of course there are some factors that the table doesn’t, and indeed can’t, show.

Firstly the number of games played to arrive at the average.

Jimmy Mullen was boss for half a season, just 23 games. He had a pretty decent start, five wins in eight games, and even when things were going downhill we won the odd game, which means his stats will always be ok. They will never demonstrate just how quickly everything was deteriorating before his sacking.

Secondly there are always patterns in results that one number alone cannot possibly show.

According to the data, Colin Lee did better than Ray Graydon. Yet the Graydon average is lowered as a result of the first 25 games of 99/00 with the dross Paul Taylor had brought in (Robins, Daley etc) yielding 19 points (0.76 ppg). With better players in the final 21 games it was upped to 1.29.

The last half of 03/04 under Lee brought in 17 points (0.82 per game) despite him having a far bigger budget and players of the calibre of Merson, Samways and Richie at his disposal.

So who did a better job – Sir Ray or the clown?

Thirdly the stats don’t show the situation each manager inherited.

Dean Smith took over with the team 8 points adrift at the foot of the table, while Chris Nicholl came in early in a season where the squad was vastly superior to anything we’d had in the preceding years.

Following on from that you have to look at players available.

None of Dicky Dosh’s successors have managed to match his points total, but then again none of them have been able to field a backline of Ince-Weston-Dann-Gerrard-Fox (with Roper and Boertien in reserve).

Finally, and probably most importantly, these meaningless statistics count for absolutely nothing once a game has kicked off.

Before the start of 2010/11, Chris Hutchings average was a relatively healthy 1.35 points per game – which didn’t actually mean jack once his imbalanced, under-motivated and badly organised team stepped out onto the pitch this time last year.

Anyway I’ve decided to enter into the spirit of things and produce my own in-depth statistical analysis of managerial achievement, under the scientific conditions of me trying to remember results from the past 20 years.

My table, the one I’ve just thought up, shows this:

Post Bescot

In case you were wondering, it shows the number of times a Walsall team has scored 5 or more in a game under each manager (I think).

SO …we all know Sir Ray was the best, Nicholl was good but his 3 were all in cup games.

Lee, Hutchings and Broadhurst were crud obviously.

So much for Sorensen and Merse’s attacking philosophy (BFJ’s 1 doesn’t really count as highly because we were against a lower division team … who had that bloke with a bandana playing for them)

Jimmy Mullen didn’t actually do that badly  … well in that one game where Ish stayed on the pitch for 90 mins anyway; and Paul Taylor was surprisingly ok as a caretaker (maybe an oddjob man who locks up at night would have suited him better than his role as Consultant Director of Football stuff).

And Deano’s actually doing alright under difficult circumstances, something which I still don’t think is too far from the truth.

To be honest the only stat that really matters is the one that says we’ve scored more than our opponents when the final whistle is blown.

Dean deserves the chance to get things turned around, we should be backing him whatever the stattos say.

Oh yeah and by way of comparison …

Pre-Bescot

Up the Walsall!