After a stellar stint at Gor Mahia, coach Dylan Kerr has decided to move on. With back to back league titles and qualification to the CAF Confederation Cup group stages, Kerr is certainly one of the club’s most successful coaches ever – if not in recent times.
But how does he compare with his more recent predecessors? We take a look at his records in comparison to Ze Maria, Frank Nuttall, Bobby Williamson and Zdravko Logarusic – comparison only applies to official competitive matches and excludes friendly games and invitational tournaments such as SportPesa Super Cup.
Number of matches
Kerr was in charge of Gor Mahia for one and half seasons, almost the same length of period as Frank Nuttalll. However, his prolonged run in the CAF competition and an introduction of a 34 game league meant he was in charge of 76 matches of which 53 were in the leagues as compared to Nuttall’s 65 matches (42 league) in charge. Of this lot, Ze Maria was in charge of the least amount of games, 45 in all competitions with 38 in the league.
Dylan Kerr – 76 (53 league matches)
Frank Nuttal – 65 (42 league matches)
Bobby Williamson – 53 (36 league matches)
Zdravko Logarusic – 48 (33 league matches)
Ze Maria – 45 (38 league matches)
Win Ratio
Kerr won 48 of his matches for a win ratio of 63.2% which just slightly shades Nuttall’s 63.1% from his 41 wins. Both were just marginally better than Ze Maria. Bobby Williamson’s 50.9% was the lowest among the recent coaches.
Dylan Kerr – 63.2% (48 wins)
Frank Nuttall – 63.1% (41 wins)
Ze Maria – 62.2% (28 wins)
Zdravko Logarusic – 56.6% (27 wins)
Bobby Williamson – 50.9% (27 wins)
Loss Ratio
Gor Mahia fans have in the recent past gotten used to the taste of walking away from the stadia with the scent of victory but along the way, there has been some losses. Logarusic and Ze Maria were the masters of avoiding losses, losing only six matches each but where does Kerr rank when we compared their loss ratios in relation to the matches they were in charge of?
Zdravko Logarusic – 12.5% (6 losses)
Ze Maria – 13.3% (6 losses)
Frank Nuttall – 13.8% (9 losses)
Dylan Kerr – 14.5% (11 losses)
Bobby Williamson – 20.8% (11 losses)
An eye for goals
Frank Nuttall’s team of 2015 was especially prolific in front of goal with the trio of Michael Olunga, Meddie Kagere and Ali Abondo. His team scored 116 goals, an average of 1.8 goals per match. This impressive figure is however matched by Dylan Kerr whose teams scored 139 goals at the same average of 1.8 goals per match. The other three coaches are all averaged at 1.3 goals per game.
Dylan Kerr – 1.8 goals per game (139 goals)
Frank Nuttal – 1.8 goals per game (116 goals)
Bobby Williamson – 1.3 goals per game (70 goals)
Zdravko Logarusic – 1.3 goals per game (62 goals)
Ze Maria – 1.3 goals per game (59 goals)
Rock solid at the back
If there is one complaint that fans had during Kerr’s reign, it was a leaking defence that conceded an average of 0.8 goals per game, a problem that Ze Maria did not experience – conceding only 0.4 goals per game. There will be many theories on this including the fact that Kerr did a lot of rotation in the 2018 season and that Ze Maria’s team did not face much more lethal strikers from beyond our borders but the stats are consistent in the league as well.
Ze Maria – 0.4 goals per game (20 goals)
Zdravko Logarusic – 0.6 goals per game (27 goals)
Frank Nuttall – 0.7 goals per game (43 goals)
Bobby Williamson – 0.8 goals per game (42 goals)
Dylan Kerr – 0.8 goals per game (61 goals)
Dylan Kerr has set the bar and the fans can only hope that whoever comes next will not only fill in his shoes but take the club to the next level in terms of achievements on the field.