Arsenal facing bizarre managerial double whammy

Football is full of oddities as every now and then we’re served up some interesting sidenotes to what actually happens on the pitch. As Arsenal prepare to host Newcastle on Saturday they’ll be taking part in one themselves.

The clash with the Magpies is mostly centred around the desperation for three points after the previous 4-0 drubbing and the return of a certain Joe Willock to the Emirates Stadium. But there is more.

Newcastle kicked off their post-Steve Bruce and Graeme Jones era with a 3-3 draw at home to Brentford. It was the first game in charge for Eddie Howe, but it also wasn’t.

Having tested positive for COVID-19 on the Friday before their match he was forced to isolate and miss the six-goal thriller. His assistant Jason Tindall took his place in the dugout and was expected to do likewise for the upcoming Emirates showdown.

Arsenal facing bizarre managerial double whammy against Eddie Howe and Ralf Rangnick in upcoming two Premier League fixtures

Producing a negative test the following Friday before the journey south, Howe will now be able to take his place in the technical area for the first time since being announced as the manager on a two-and-half year deal.

In doing so it will mark another peculiar instance where his first match in charge in the dugout as Newcastle manager will be against Mikel Arteta, just as Arteta’s first match in charge of Arsenal came against Howe when he was manager at Bournemouth.

Who expects a ‘new manager bounce’ for the winless side? Well, Arsenal might have to deal with that twice.

Indeed, Ralf Rangnick’s imminent appointment as interim manager at Manchester United will also see him take his place on the sidelines for the first time against Arsenal. Football always manages to cough up some new scenarios and in this case it could be Arsenal who feel the side effects of it.

As noted by the Premier League, it turns out this phenomenon is very real. At least in recent history it is, anyway.

"“In the four complete campaigns since the start of 2017/18, there were 26 managerial changes in the Premier League,” the report reads.“In 20 of those cases, more than three-quarters, the new man averaged more points per match (ppm) in his first five matches in charge than the team’s average that season before his appointment.“In nine cases, or 35 per cent, the incoming manager instantly doubled the previous points average or did even better than that.”"

These numbers focus more on the series of results that follow as opposed to the first game in charge, but they nonetheless prove that there is an overall upturn in performances and results with a new manager at the helm.

Lucky Arsenal, then, that they’ll get to test this out themselves twice in two matches, with the latter of those being at a stadium where they’ve won only once since 2006.

Good thing each game and each manager is different and this is all meaningless, right?