Ruud van Nistelrooy and Steve Cooper have now had 12 games each in charge of Leicester City in the Premier League season, allowing for a more detailed analysis of their reigns
After every Leicester City match over the past two-and-a-half months, Ruud van Nistelrooy has been compared, sometimes favourably, sometimes unfavourably, to Steve Cooper.
Contrasting the pros and cons of successive managers is natural, but especially when they’ve each taken the reins in the same season.
It’s not just fans who have their say, it’s pundits too, with Sunday Times columnist Martin Samuel writing this weekend that Cooper merited more time and that City supporters were wrong to want him out
It is at least a fairer time to now make the comparisons between the two managers. The defeat to Arsenal was van Nistelrooy’s 12th Premier League match in charge of City, meaning he’s now had the same number of games in the dugout as Cooper.
Here, we run through the key factors to see how the two managers stack up against one another.
For many, this is all that matters. Survival is a game of getting points on the board, and Cooper was more successful at it than van Nistelrooy has so far been.
Cooper managed 10 points from his 12 matches, which was enough to keep the club out of the relegation zone at the time of his sacking.
Van Nistelrooy is three points back on seven. They both won two games each, but Cooper picked up four draws, whereas there has only been one under van Nistelrooy.
Spread across a whole season, Cooper’s points-per-game rate would have seen City finish on 32 points, which would have been enough for survival last term, but not enough any other year. Whether that sort of total will be this season is as yet unknown. It will certainly be close to that.
Based on his first 12 matches, a full season of van Nistelrooy would see City finish with 22 points, which clearly isn’t good enough for survival
City scored 15 goals under Cooper, a decent tally in 12 games. What was especially pleasing there is that they only failed to score in one of his matches, coincidentally against van Nistelrooy’s Manchester United.
That consistency in finding the net appears integral in the club having collected more points under Cooper.
Under van Nistelrooy, City have only scored nine goals. What’s worse is that they have only scored in five of his 12 matches, and just three of the last 10.
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