Graphic: Mixed fortunes - who's good and who's not

They always ask the wrong question. When I tell people that I am about to reveal the Fink Tank Manager of the Year, I am usually asked “Who?” or sometimes “Why?” or most often “What are you serving for dinner and can I come?” But the right question is “How?”

I am going to tell you the identity of our Manager of the Year and you will have your own opinion of whether that feels right. But the correct way to judge if the result is correct is to judge whether the basis on which we made the calculation is correct. In other words, you need to think about how we did it, rather than who we picked. The result merely follows from our method of calculation.

So let me explain the thinking behind our method. First, we believe strongly that a calculation is better than a subjective judgment.

Subjective judgments based on newspaper reports or single incidents are inclined to give too much emphasis to individual events that happen to be at the front of people’s minds. This is what psychologists call the availability bias.

Second, you can’t use raw data on club performance to choose a manager of the year, because this ignores the elephant in the room. Money is the single most important driver of performance. You have to be able to model the relationship between the money spent and the team’s performance if you are going to isolate the impact of the manager.

Third, looking only at money, performance and expectations excludes many things that people might like to include. Press relations, say, or nimbleness in the transfer market. But our view is that these things don’t matter unless they impact on a team’s results. Who cares if someone is good in the transfer market unless they produce good results?

Finally, the period over which they produce good results is important.

Having a manager of the month is absurd, because the results of one month of games tell you almost as much about luck as they do about management.

There is a good argument that even a year is too short. But it is reasonable to take a look each season.

So, Dr Henry Stott, Dr Mark Latham and Dr Ian Graham began by plotting the number of points obtained by each club against their estimated player wage bill. This allowed a curve to be drawn that shows how many points you would expect a team to score given the amount of money they were spending. As you move towards the top end you have to spend more and more money to gain anything extra in the way of points. That is even more true this season than it was last season.

Finally, we excluded managers who had been in charge for fewer than 15 games because we didn’t think there was enough data to judge fully.

This year’s Manager of the Year is Sir Alex Ferguson, the first time he lifts the prestigious trophy. Even though Manchester United’s wage bill is vast, his performance exceeded the expected performance by a wide margin. Rafael Benítez came second, his best Fink Tank Manager of the Year performance. Tony Pulis and Phil Brown have also had exceptional seasons. David Moyes finished near the top again.

It is worth noting that Sam Allardyce did better than expected given the Blackburn Rovers wage bill despite not having a chance to play the transfer market properly.

Luiz Felipe Scolari finished in the bottom segment, though controversially above Gianfranco Zola. Guus Hiddink was excluded because he wasn’t manager for long enough. But if he had been included? He would have come second.