have long had a theory and it is no doubt a theory amongst many handicappers and sports betting enthusiasts, that when there is a coaching change during the season, this can dramatically improve a team’s performance for the next few games.

If you are into NFL betting or putting your money on any sports event, this is can be a ‘nice little earner’. Ok, coaching changes during the season are not that regular but when they occur they often do so due to a team’s poor performance – the reason why most coaches are fired in the first place. If a team is performing badly, then its price or odds could be artificially high and that is where the ‘new manager effect’ can be lucrative because you can bet on that team at what may be an enhanced price.

I love to play, watch and follow soccer. I can’t remember sports handicapper picks the amount of times a new manager has joined a soccer club mid-way through a season, to run a team on its knees, with morale at an all time low – only for that same team to win its next few games. ‘Instinctively’ (because I never kept the stats) the ‘positive bounce’ seems to last for about three games – before the club falters again. Still, I wondered if anyone else was of the same opinion.

Low and behold, in an old NFL football newsletter from the mid-nineties, I read about a bunch of handicappers who had noticed the same thing but actually did the hard work in tracking head coaches who were fired / replaced during the regular NFL season and the effect it had on the team.

Their research showed that the teams responded by covering the spread for the next three games, after which the ‘effect’ tended to wear off.

This effect can probably be attributed to the ‘stand together’ emotions that surface when a manager is fired and also because the games immediately following a new manager’s arrival, give the players a chance to impress and perhaps cement their places in the team.

I probably should keep records of this effect next season in the Premiership and the NFL and ask my friend to monitor MLB, NBA and NHL.

You have to be a little careful, because I would imagine that the new manager effect may not work late in the season if, for instance, a team had nothing at all to play for (e.g. didn’t make the post season) but this is a betting strategy that may be worth following along with your own betting strategies, during future NFL seasons.