FM12: The Sir Alex Ferguson Experiment

Countless books and articles have been written on the personality traits and skill sets that go together in making the perfect football coach. But in the world of Football Manager these magic ingredients are more readily identified as a series of attributes.

But how important are these personal and coaching attributes in determining how the A.I. teams will perform? What would happen if we were to take one of the game’s greatest A.I. managers and put him in charge of a lowly ranked club?

With these questions in mind I set up the following small experiment… to remove Sir Alex Ferguson from the comfort of his Old Trafford office and to put him in charge of Accrington Stanley, a club synonymous with anonymity and one expected to struggle to stay in the football league.

“Accrington Stanley, who are they?…”

“Exactly!”

1980’s advert for milk

To set up the experiment conditions I turned to the Football Manager Editor – whilst my Sir Alex Ferguson retained all of the main attribute scores, I did have to make some small concessions.

Firstly, Fergie starts the game at the ripe old age of 69 and this leads to him retiring after a season or two – so that I could measure his performance as Accrington manager over a sensible period of time I was forced to turn back time, giving Ferguson back the very best years of his life.

Next I had to eradicate the massive reputation that Ferguson had deservedly amassed over the past 30 years or more – after all, the project would be pointless if, after a few weeks in League Two, he was offered a lucrative contract at a big name side!

Therefore my Sir Alex starts this experiment with a “Home Reputation” of 85 (out of 200) and a “World Reputation” of 30. I also went about removing the legendary status the Scot enjoyed at Manchester United, Aberdeen and East Stirlingshire.

Finally, I set about awarding Fergie the same terms and conditions that his predecessor at Accrington had enjoyed – a £1200 per week one year rolling contract. A quick look at Stanley’s finances will tell you that the club can’t afford the massive £80,000 a week he was on at Manchester United!

But, it seemed somewhat churlish to rescind Fergie’s knighthood – so he will remain Sir Alex Ferguson throughout the experiment.

THE CONTROL

In order to effectively measure my Sir Alex’s progress I needed a control – that is a game run for the same time period but with an unaltered database, this allows us to compare the fortunes of Accrington Stanley with and without Ferguson at the helm.

This is how the control game played out over twenty seasons:

In 2012 Accrington Stanley narrowly avoided relegation from League Two, finishing twenty first in the division – a year later, however, they dropped out of the Football League as they ended the season in twenty third position.

The club then spent five years in the Blue Square Premier League before gaining promotion back into League Two at the end of the 2017/18 season.

Accrington spent the next three years in League Two finishing 15th, 17th and 14th respectively before suffering the ignominy of relegation once again in 2022 – on this occasion the team finished rock bottom.

It would take Stanley seven years of Conference football before they could reclaim their place amongst the ninety-two league clubs, going up as Champions in 2029. The momentum stayed with the team as they finished 6th and 2nd over the final two seasons.

THE EXPERIMENT

In our experiment Sir Alex Ferguson had a somewhat slow start to his career with Accrington Stanley, ending the 2011/12 season in fifteenth position. There was steady improvement in the following year as the team finished two places higher before they finally clinched promotion in 2014 by finishing third.

Sir Alex oversaw two turbulent seasons in League One, in 2015 Accrington avoided the drop by a single point but found themselves unable to repeat this feat in 2016 when they ended the campaign in twenty second place and were relegated.

The manager’s class shone through, however, as the side were instantly promoted back into League One in 2017 – where they remained for another eight years before beating Crystal Palace 1-0 in the play off final to lift themselves into England’s second tier of football.

Fergie then set about establishing his team in the Championship, between 2026 and 2030 Accrington Stanley finished 19th, 11th, 9th, 9th and 10th respectively. Then, in 2031 (the final year of our experiment) came Sir Alex’s finest achievement – promotion to the Premier League, beating Ipswich 5-3 on aggregate in the play-off semi-finals before hammering Everton 3-0 at Wembley.

As we can see from the graph above, Accrington Stanley faired considerably better under the stewardship of the experiment’s Sir Alex Ferguson than they did in our control game – achieving four promotions to take a seat at the top table of English Football. What makes this accomplishment even more remarkable is that Sir Alex spent a grand total of £2,429,700 on transfers and even made a net profit of £8,266,300 on all dealings!

Proof then the personal and coaching attributes of the A.I. managers can make a substantial difference to the success of the Football Manager clubs they are in charge of. What I find most surprising, however, is that Sir Alex spent all twenty years of the experiment at Accrington Stanley with no other club expressing an interest… now how could that be?