A Tale of 2 Coaches - Is Ze Maria Underrated?

Ze Maria still in Nuttal's shadow

He has only been in charge of 15 league games and a section of the K’Ogalo nation are already getting restless with coach Ze Maria as Gor Mahia lie four points behind league leaders Tusker. Another 0-0 draw with Bandari made it 3 draws in the last five games, and with only 9 games to go, the fans are getting jittery.  While Ze Maria has maintained that his strategy includes laying foundations for the future, for a fanbase used to success in the recent past and with Frank Nuttal’s shadow never far off, nothing short of an unprecedented 4^th league win in a row will keep them happy. At first glance I thought that Ze Maria’s league record is not that bad, despite of protestations by the so-called Nuttal Orphans. Maybe we are performing ok and it is other teams that have improved their performances? Taking cue from a similar comparison I did a while back when Nuttal was in his 20^th league game, I thought the only way to find out is to compare his first 15 league games with that of his predecessor, and find out if his job is really that shoddy or whether all he needs is time.

	Matches	Won	Lost	Drawn	Points	Ave Points PG
Ze Maria	15	10	1	4	34	2.27
Frank Nuttal	15	10	1	4	34	2.27

  

As it turns out, Ze Maria’s and Frank Nuttal’s records are actually identical. So could it be that maybe fans took to Nuttal’s high tempo width and cross game as opposed to the deliberate and often intricate approach Ze Maria is trying to inculcate? Fans love goals and maybe we can use goals scored versus those conceded as a measure of how exciting the teams have been?

	Matches	Goals scored (& average per game)	Goals conceded (& average per game)
Ze Maria	15	20	5
Frank Nuttal	15	28	12

Here we see Nuttal’s side were generally more attack minded, scoring an average of 1.9 goals per game as opposed to Ze Maria’s 1.3 goals. Ze Maria was a defender and maybe he has focused on the defensive discipline as his team only concedes an average of 0.3 goals per game compared to Nuttal’s 0.8 conceded in his first 10 games.

It looks like all Ze Maria needs to do is ensure the team scores more goals and maybe he will win over the fans.