By Robbie Butler]
​
Viktor Hovland was forced to withdraw from his singles match at the Ryder Cup after aggravating a neck injury he has been dealing with for several months. The issue first flared up during Saturday’s foursomes, when he felt pain and stiffness, and despite treatment he couldn’t recover in time for Sunday. An MRI revealed a bulging disc, and while he attempted to warm up for his scheduled match against Harris English, he ultimately couldn’t rotate his neck enough to compete.

I did not know this before yesterday, but the Ryder Cup has a special safeguard for these situations. Rule 3.d of the Ryder Cup Captains’ Agreement states: “When the Captains lodge their team selection for singles play, they must provide a sealed envelope containing the name of one player who is regarded as having been paired with a player who, through illness, injury or other emergency reason, has to withdraw from the other side. Such pairing is regarded as a tied match.”

Before the singles session, each captain submits one name in a sealed envelope as a backup. If a player on the opposing team is unable to play, the named player from the other side also sits out, and the match is automatically halved. In this case, English was the unlucky American drawn, meaning his contest with Hovland was scratched and each team was awarded half a point. The rule meant only 11 singles matches were contested instead of the usual 12, something that hasn’t happened in decades – I’ll return to this shortly.

I was surprised that Europe won ½ a point, but that is the formal rule, despite some criticism from the U.S. side, with calls to review whether halving the match is fair compared to simply awarding a full point to the fit player. The half-point allocation left Europe and the U.S. on 12–5. Just two more points would be needed for Europe to retain the trophy. Although the U.S. staged a spirited fightback in the singles session, Europe managed to hold on, eventually clinching a 15–13 victory. Even allocating the U.S. a full point would have left the outcome unchanged, with the final score reading 14.5–13.5.

And the U.S. needs to recall 1991 at Kiawah Island. American golfer Steve Pate was unable to play in the Sunday singles. His match with David Gilford was deemed a tie – ½ point each. Had Europe been awarded the full point – as the U.S. argued for yesterday – the score in 1991 would have ended 14–14 rather than 14.5–13.5. The outcome would have been a draw, rather than a U.S. win. A draw would have meant the holders retained the trophy. The 1989 Ryder Cup was also a draw, so the last winners had been Europe in 1987 at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio. A famous European victory courtesy of an Irishman in Dublin – how apt. In that case, Europe would have retained the trophy in 1991 rather than lost, and Bernhard Langer’s career would be remembered for different reasons by some.

As economist John Kenneth Galbraith once said, “Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.” And in golf.

By David Butler

Sacking a manager in football is rarely cheap. Their coaching team usually go with them and multiple severance packages ensue. A replacement team need to be recruited and typically want guarantees of future transfer funds. If the new managerial appointment is not unattached further compensation will be required.  Of course all of this upheaval happens because clubs can’t/won’t sack the players.

Why sack? I suppose there might be an opportunity cost of having a ‘do nothing’ policy; risk of relegation, lost European qualification places etc – performance declines typically map into revenues losses. Club boards often may view a sacking as damage limitation despite the high costs. Perhaps they are thinking that given the uncertainty, we don’t know how bad this could get? That said, while some sackings may seem economically justified in the short term, they may simply recycle the same problems within clubs.

There is a large literature on the effect of managerial change, but not as much is known about the process of losing your job.  Of course, we know it is almost always down to performances (although Nuno is a recent exception), but what type of losses matters most and how many? Is there a ‘beyond the point of rescue’ stage?  Robbie had an entry below some weeks back on how incentives are changing here given the size of managerial contracts.

Graham Potter’s head is now on the chopping block and the chart below shows the market odds for him to be the next manager sacked – it almost now looks inevitable. Odds for Potter to be sacked tumbled after an opening day loss. He got brief reprieves due to other clubs’ poor performances and a win at Nottingham Forest only for the odds to shorten and not recover following a 3-0 defeat at home to Tottenham. David Moyes could put the final nail in the coffin this weekend. 

By Robbie Butler

I am delighted to report our latest publication success in Behavioral Economcis Review. The sport in question - greyhound racing - is lagrely overlooked in the sports economic literature.

We test whether the dog drawn in Trap 4 - the Coffin Trap - is less likely to win any given race. Our motivation? Many intuitions evolve into folk beliefs that are shared and persist within a community. These offer dubious cues to influence decision-making. We examine a natural setting where folk belief can be empirically testable: the sport of greyhound racing. This community maintain that greyhounds drawn in Trap 4 – the ‘Coffin Trap’ – are disadvantaged and ought to be avoided by bettors.

Using data from 78,595 greyhound performances in Great Britain, we empirically test the accuracy of this enduring intuition. Controlling for pre- and within-race conditions, our results support the community intuition. The ‘Coffin Trap’ significantly disadvantages greyhound and this is not reflected in market odds.  This finding are robust across races and empirical estimators. As there is no scientific basis for the origin of this belief, these results substantiate the success of a culturally surviving intuition. We conjecture that a valid cue has emerged from learning over time within the community. 

The paper is undergoing proofing and will be available shortly online. 

By Robbie Butler

Jose Mourinho was recently sacked by Turkish club Fenerbahçe after just over a year in charge. The Portuguese manager is no stranger to the sack — Chelsea (twice), Real Madrid, Manchester United… he’s been here before.

By September 2025, Mourinho has reportedly pocketed close to £100 million in pay-offs. Which raises the question: in football today, is there actually an incentive to get sacked?

The modern game chews through managers. Few survive longer than three or four seasons at one club. Pep Guardiola, appointed in 2016, is the longest-serving boss in the Premier League. Next comes Mikel Arteta (2020), then Marco Silva, who’s only been at Fulham since July 2021.

Stability is rare. And yet, instability can be lucrative. Had Silva been sacked in 2022 or 2023, for instance, Fulham would have been forced to pay off his contract — and another club would almost certainly have snapped him up.
Just look at Ange Postecoglou. Spurs let him go this summer, he cashed his pay-off, and now he’s landed on his feet at Nottingham Forest. In the space of a few months, his earnings have jumped simply because he was fired and re-hired.

Mourinho is the best example of this. Hard Jose survived in his role at Chelsea since 2004 it is extremely unlike he would have accumulated the same level of wealth. His sackings have allowed him to earn money for seasons that he already been paid for by the sacking club. Essentially getting paid twice for the same season by two different clubs – his current club and the previous one.

So maybe the quickest way for a manager to get rich isn’t by staying loyal to one club — it’s by being sacked, paid off, and then hired all over again.

By John Considine

While following some threads on Google Scholar, I encountered a nice SSRN paper by Leo Morabito and Vincenzo Scoppa.  The paper examines decisions by referees from 21,400 soccer matches in major European leagues.  Each game is divided into separate minute intervals to give 2,142,000 observations.  While they say that they find "referees exhibit a strong preference for fairness", it is better to substitute the term "inequality aversion" for "fairness".  This is more in keeping with both the title of their paper and the results.

It is worth repeating that the paper uses minute-by-minute commentary data.  This facilitates a dynamic analysis of decisions based on the in-game situation.  They have three major findings.

First, they find that referees are not inclined towards increasing the inequality in the award of penalties.  For example, if the referee has awarded a penalty to one team then the probability of a second penalty to that team is reduced.  This supports the work of Wolf Schwarz in the 2011 paper 'Compensating tendencies in penalty kick decisions of referees in professional football: Evidence from the German Bundesliga 1963-2006'.  Compensating tendencies is similar inequality aversion.

Second, Morabito and Scoppa find that referees are not inclined towards increasing the inequality in the award of red and yellow cards.  A second inequality aversion.  One might suggest that it is "fair" that a player should get a red card if they deserve it.

Third, they find that referees are likely to increase injury time when there is an inequality in the score line compare to when the teams are level.  A recent post on this blog (here) presented a picture from a paper published in Oxford Economic Papers.  The picture clearly shows greater injury time, compared to a tied game, when either the home or away team is a goal behind.

By David Butler

At the beginning of the Premier League season the markets priced Manchester City at just over 3/1 to lift the trophy in May. The OPTA models suggested they had an 18.8% chance of finishing first. The market odds have risen to 7/1 after three rounds of fixtures – Manchester City only have 3 points out of a possible 9, suffering two surprising defeats.

Can Pep forget about winning the Premier League? Probably. I would think these odds are not very generous. We’re starting to get signals now and eventual winners tend to incur few losses, especially so early in the season. The bookmakers now think it is a two-horse race. While there is more to play for outside of winning the league, when it comes to lifting the trophy, seasonal uncertainty quickly evaporates for the majority of clubs.  In this case, even for a club with high hopes just three weeks ago.

Early slips can be detrimental. Over Premier League history, Manchester United are the only club who were in a similar position to City after three rounds but still lifted the title. Ferguson’s sides started slowly three times (92/93, 98/99 and 07/08) - they only accumulated 2/3 points after the opening three fixtures but still ended up on top in May

By Robbie Butler

The annual European gathering of sports economists kicks off in Innsbruck, Austria, today. The event – now in its 16th cycle – is the largest of its kind in Europe.

The full programme – which includes some 57 different paper presentations across a diverse array of areas and sports – can be accessed here. Our paper – a collaboration with David Butler and Katrin Scharfenkamp of Bielefeld University, Germany – is called "Back in the Game? ACL Recovery and Performance in Women’s Professional Football."

Our research seeks to complement ongoing studies on presenteeism by charting the impact of ACL injuries on player performance upon their return. Specifically, we are exploring whether there are losses to female football players’ post-recovery productivity compared to pre-ACL-injury performance due to presenteeism. We access player-match-level data of female football players’ ACL injuries and advanced performance statistics in European leagues (e.g., WSL, Frauen-Bundesliga, Liga F), as well as the NWSL and A-League, from 2017–2025. These players are then compared to a control group of injured players.

The paper is due to be presented this afternoon and will be followed by the AGM. This year will see the election of a new committee and president-elect. 

By Robbie Butler

The transfer saga now surrounding Alexander Isak is something many football fans will have seen before. Names such as Harry Kane, Dimitar Berbatov, Carlos Tevez, Neymar — the full list is much longer. It is interesting that Isak is a Newcastle United player. The club has been here before. In fact, they were probably the genesis of the original shift towards player power.

In the early 1960s, England international George Eastham took on Newcastle United and the football establishment in a case that would change the game forever. At the time, the “retain-and-transfer” system meant that clubs could keep a player’s registration even after their contract expired, effectively binding them indefinitely and preventing them from signing elsewhere. Eastham, unhappy with conditions at Newcastle and denied a transfer, went on strike, working outside football while waiting for the club to release him. Although he eventually moved to Arsenal in 1960, he pursued a legal challenge with the backing of the Professional Footballers’ Association, arguing that the system was an unfair restraint of trade.

In 1964, the High Court agreed, ruling that the retain aspect of the system was indeed unreasonable. While Eastham didn’t personally receive a big payout, his victory dismantled one of the most restrictive labour controls in sport and led to fairer contractual terms for players, including the creation of transfer tribunals. The case paved the way for greater player autonomy, influencing landmark rulings like Bosman decades later. Eastham’s stand is remembered as a turning point in football history — the moment the game began moving from “slavery contracts” toward the modern era of player rights.

Bosman is someone that people are much more familiar with, and soon maybe Lassana Diarra. I wrote about this last year. In December 2024, FIFA introduced an “interim regulatory framework” to address the court’s concerns. This covers compensation for breaches, joint and several liability, issuance of International Transfer Certificates, and tribunal proceedings. However, it is far from over. Now, it’s up to Belgian courts and football stakeholders to translate the ruling into lasting, practical changes for player transfers and contractual freedom.

Is this where Isak is going? It is reported he has 3 years left on his contract. As Diarra has shown, this should be meaningless. The French player’s win in the European court means that the current rules effectively impede the free movement of labour and the rules “do not appear to be indispensable or necessary.” So a player could potentially walk away from a contract without compensation for the club holding the contract. This is no different from almost any job: work a period of notice and then leave — for free.

If compensation were required, it could be calculated as the value of the remaining contract. If a player is owed £20 million in wages, the player or their agent could compensate the club to this value and say this is what the player is worth. If the club were to argue otherwise, the player could ask why they were not paid their ‘true value’.

Of course, this remains all hypothetical. At least, for now.

By David Butler

​Some months back I had an entry on football standards across divisions. I charted the output declines of top scorers contracted to promoted clubs upon reaching the top of the football pyramid. On average an expected goals rate of ~15 reduces to ~5 when strikers move to the elite tier in England. About 6 assists per season reduce to about 2.

Of course Arsenal's new star signing Gykores is not contracted to a promoted club, so this ‘extreme’ deflator would not be applicable, but it is unlikely he will replicate his past 4 seasons xG and xA form that took place in lower quality leagues. Expectations seem very high given his scoring rate and performances, but will we see an xG of 19.2 and 19.5 (Coventry – Championship)  or 22.5 and 30.8 (Porto – Primeira Liga)? I doubt it. 

By John Considine

The picture below is taken from last month's edition of Oxford Economic Papers.  The article by Finn Spilker and colleagues is titled "Favouritism, social pressure, and gender".  The relative position of the Xs and Os tell much of the gender story that is examined in the article.

It is a picture worth thinking about.  Some obvious questions spring to mind.  Why should there be less added time for games with a bigger score difference?  To generate a score difference requires goals.  We are led to believe that the greater the number of goals then the greater the amount of added time.  Why is there an increase in time added in games with a 1-goal difference compared to a game that are level?  Related to the previous question, why are the Xs above the Os only for 1-goal differences?

The article is worth a read.  But the picture below is worth at least 1,000 words.