Professor devises climate-based model predict football sack

Professor devises climate-based model to predict football sackings

LONDON (AFP) - The life of a football manager in the English Premiership is frantic, pressured and apt to end in sometimes arbitrary dismissal.

However, now under-fire bosses can predict when they might face the sack -- using the weather.

A professor of management at Cambridge University has devised a complex theoretical model plotting the fates of club managers, based on similarly complex ones used by climate experts, the Guardian newspaper said Tuesday.

Chris Hope's mathematical index weighs a series of factors, such as performances over the past few games, results over a longer term and the expectations of each club.

He used a computer to process an astonishing four billion virtual Premiership games to calculate the so-called "trap door level" for each club, below which managers can consider themselves likely to face the boot.

The bad news for Everton's David Moyles is that after only the first game of the Premiership season, Sunday's 4-1 defeat to Arsenal, he is already in peril.

In contrast, Portsmouth's Harry Redknapp is seen as most secure in his job, and could afford to go 20 games without a win before slipping into the trap door zone.

"Clubs that have high ambitions, such as Arsenal and Manchester United, have a higher trap door than clubs like Portsmouth, who are happy just to stay in the Premier League," Hope was quoted by the Guardian as saying.

"Football is a bit like predicting climate changes. There is a lot of uncertainty and you have to make decisions about the future based on existing data.

"There's a lot of chance and uncertainty involved in football, you never quite know what's going to happen, so it's very much like future climate changes."