Premiership Manager of the Month - August 07 - Allardyce

Premiership Managers of the Month have fall into the following two categories (analysis from last four years):

'Top 4' Winner - 16/36
'Non Top 4' Winner - 20/36

(Stats. from http://www.premiershiplatest.com/manager-of-the-month.html)

There is an obvious bias towards the top 4 teams, but not so serious that it cannot be overcome. Ferguson (9-2) and Mourinho (5-1) are unsurprsingly the first and seeond favourites. However, Sam Allardyce has won a signicant no. of 'Manager of the Month' awards with Bolton (4/36) which puts him amongst the leaders in terms of strike rate.

Newcastle play one game less than the majority of other Premiership sides (3 rather than 4 games.) This means they are unlikely to lead the Premiership (where the one fewer games is a major handicap). However, 3 wins from 3 would put Allardyce in with an excellent chance of the Premiership Manager of the Month for August.

Can they achieve this? A relatively quiet summer in terms of new player purchase could count against Newcastle long term. However, with new tactic/training methods deployed over the summer, I suspect that Allarydce will make a improvements just with the current squad. He can certainly improve on the performances produced by previous Newcastle managers, a fact that will count in his favour.

I'm therfore suprised to find Allarydce is 25-1 for August Premiership Manager of the Month. I've therfore had 4pts on this at Paddypower.

Update : This has been backed into 18/1 but is still value at this price - I'd make it a 10/1-12/1 chance.