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Royle vs Keegan

It's been a relatively quiet couple of days news wise following the West Ham, with only Beanie the horse managing to keep the press occupied since the 'Pearce out' headlines seem to be yesterday fish and chip wrapping.

Looking round the excellent mcfcstats site, I came across an interesting comparison between two of our most recent managers - Kevin Keegan and Joe Royle.

'King Kev' - the great entertainer, champion of gung-hu, attacking football and 'Big Joe' - famed for the dogs of war and grinding out results. I assumed that Keegan's record would be far superior - having had the superb promotion season and continuous Premiership campaigns wheras Royle endured a more topsy-turvy time in charge - experiencing two relegations and two promotions during his time in charge.

As a comparison though, their records are surprisingly identical and definitely worth looking at:

Games in charge:
Royle 145, Keegan 151.

Wins:
Royle 61, Keegan 64.

Draws:
Royle 40, Keegan 35.

Losses:
Royle 44, Keegan 52.

Goals for:
Royle 211, Keegan 244.

Goals against:
Royle 160, Keegan 192.

Win %:
Royle 42.1, Keegan 42.4

Obviously there are differences worth looking at - noticeably that the majority of Keegans games were in The Premiership whereas Royle had a lone season at the top level, but Keegan had a far better squad and financial resources at his disposal, but the similarities in the wins was surprising and I expected Royle to have suffered more defeats than Keegan following two relegations and a (in the main) stuttering promotion from Division 2.

Keegan, unsurprisingly has the edge in goals scored and living up to his reputation endured more goals against.

Both had decent win percentages as well - comparing favourably with Peter Reid over the past couple of decades, but neither was the manager with the best win record during the past twenty year.

Who was it?

This guy.