The IMOTGP View: Defending Bradley at Swansea is Wrong and Unnecessary

Unless you have been under a rock, you know by now that the first American to manage in the famed Premier League is no longer after Swansea City sacked the embattled Bob Bradley on Tuesday. The dreadful Swans continue to swan dive down the table as they languish in 19th place; Bradley picked up eight points out of 33 in his 11 matches in charge with two victories and one point out of 18 in his "road games."

Swansea shipped 10 goals in their last three defeats with supporters calling for his ouster after a Boxing Day debacle in a 4-1 home thrashing at the hands of West Ham. Bradley insisted he would fight on but it was clear that he wasn't reaching this sad-sack group.

The inevitable comparison is being made to predecessor Francesco Guidolin, who picked up four points in seven matches in charge.  Swansea were outscored 12-6 in Guidolin's matches compared to 29-15 in Bradley's 11.  Obviously the Swans scored more and defended worse under the American.

That is, unless, you look at the blogosphere and see selected facts that say otherwise like this Tweet:

Swansea City expected goals per game by manager this season...

- Guidolin: 1.39 xG, 2.29 xGA
- Bradley:  1.40 xG, 2.07 xGA

— Paul Carr (@PCarrESPN) December 27, 2016

This prompted other U.S. football writers of the pro-Bradley bent to state unequivocally that Bradley wasn't worse than Guidolin.  Except that he was worse, and not based on simple metrics such as points per game and goals allowed per game.

You see, the reason coaches like U.S. boss Bruce Arena are critical of analytics is because they know raw data about expected goals and shot attempts can be largely rubbish, to use a British term. That's because when you score is very important in football since a trailing team obviously must press the action; this is something that expected goals doesn't take into account.

That's why we crunched the numbers here at IMOTGP and found out that Guidolin's Swansea conceded three first-half goals and nine in the second half in his seven matches. That means four times his side kept a clean sheet at half-time. Bradley's Swansea conceded 12 goals in the first half and 17 after, with only four clean sheets at the half. Why does this matter? It means that Guidolin's side was more competitive as far as giving Swansea a better chance at a positive result.

Need more proof?  Guidolin's Swansea led 11.6 percent of the time and trailed 28.7 percent of the time with the score tied over the balance. Bradley's numbers in that category were 10.4 percent and a whopping 44.6 percent of time trailing. We should note we calculated this over 90 minutes in each match so the wild 5-4 win over Crystal Palace with two stoppage-time goals earned the Swans a total of 0 minutes for those tallies since they came after 90 minutes. The point remains nonetheless that Bradley's Swansea trailed for 442 out of 990 minutes; almost half the time.

It's foolish to defend Bradley using cockamamie statistics and there's no need to compare him to Guidolin anyway since either way you look at it, Swansea are a hot mess of garbage. We didn't even mention that Guidolin had to face Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea (a 2-2 draw!) among his matches, and those are the top three sides in the table. Bradley faced the three teams below them and lost those three by a combined 11-3. Bradley lost the plot, and was rightly dismissed.

We here at the IMOTGP are fans of Bob Bradley; otherwise this reader would beat us up! No one should be surprised that he became the butt of many jokes in Britain. This situation wasn't dissimilar to how American basketball fans reacted when David Blatt, an American-Israeli with a vast amount of coaching experience in Europe, was hired to coach the great LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Blatt was ridiculed at every turn and was dismissed as Cleveland went on to win the NBA title without him. When Blatt resurfaced in Turkey, he was made fun of for accepting that job.

This will leave a stain on his c.v. but if you were being honest, you had to ask whether Bradley, while a good manager, was really experienced enough to manage at this level.  He coached middling national teams from the United States and Egypt as well as European clubs that were hardly prominent.  In comparison, Guidolin had a distinguished career at many Serie A stops and Monday's counterpart, Slaven Bilic, has guided Croatia as well as top teams in Russia and Turkey.

Should Bradley have found a way into the Championship and developed a team that won promotion into the world's most expensive league? Perhaps, although that would also have been a difficult task. Should he have finished the job in France and brought Le Havre to Ligue One? Perhaps, again. Bradley chose to strike while the iron was hot; the problem was the iron he picked up was too hot to handle.

There is no need to criticize Bradley; he's still one of the best American managers in history.  The sad truth is that the vast majority of football players and coaches from the United States simply do not have enough of a top-class pedigree to succeed in Europe's top leagues at this point. There are exceptions, of course, but to expect instant success from a U.S. player or coach is pure folly.  The United States has much to prove in the football world and Bradley's admirable tenure was more evidence of this.