The fight against drugs cheats in sport goes on. One of the sports where doping has been widespread is cycling. Today, another two riders were found to have used banned substances to gain an advantage in this year’s Tour de France, taking the total to six.

It’s always difficult to know what to think when news of a failed drug test comes through. It’s possible to put a positive spin on it, as the German cycling federation (BDR) chief has done:

“It is a shock, but it is also good news,” said BDR president Rudolf Scharping. “The ever tighter net of the anti-doping investigators is making sure that practically no-one is getting through anymore.”

[Source: BBC News, Tour rocked by new positive tests]

As Scharping says, one explanation of an increase in failed drug tests is that the tests are getting better. If we take this view, then although a failed drug test may be bad news in the short term, at least it can reassure us that we have effective tests and give us hope that the sport will soon be clean.

An alternative explanation of an increase in failed drug tests, though, is that there’s been an increase in drug use. Our tests may be no more effective than before (the tests may have improved, but the methods used to evade detection may have improved too), and the reason that we’re catching more riders may be that more riders are taking banned substances. In that case, each failed drug test just shows that cheating is prevalent.

There does seem to be a new determination to clean up cycling, but despite what Scharping says it isn’t obvious that drug tests coming back positive shows that we’re succeeding.

Football managers get sacked all the time. There’s near-constant speculation in the media about which manager will be the next to go. Bookies even run an annual “sack race”, with punters betting on which Premier League manager will get sacked first in the season. It’s difficult to think of a profession with worse job security.

Right now, Sam Allardyce’s job at Newcastle is looking vulnerable. He’s only been at the club for seven months, but the team are playing ugly football and losing, so there are calls for his head.

One of his senior players, Nicky Butt, has backed him using an argument that always comes up on these occasions: stability leads to success.

If you look at all the big teams, like United and Arsenal, they’re the clubs that have stood by managers for a long time. If we do that, I’m sure we’ll do it right.

[Source: BBC Sport: Allardyce has to stay, says Butt]

So the argument is that the big clubs have stood by their managers for a long time, so standing by their managers must be what made them successful.

The first concern with this argument is that it there may be some selective sampling going on. Man Utd and Arsenal may have had the same manager for years, but Chelsea have done fairly well recently despite sacking two successful managers since Abramovich bought the club a few years ago: Ranieri and Mourinho. Not all the big clubs have had stability. That’s a minor quibble though.

The real problem with the argument is that it seems to get the causal order wrong. Plausibly, it’s not standing by your manager that makes you successful; it’s being successful that makes you (more likely to) stand by your manager.

Sure, a few managers have been sacked when things have been going well on the pitch, but it’s much more normal for managers to get sacked when things are going badly. Even if stability didn’t lead to success, then, we would expect to see a correlation between teams doing well and their managers keeping their jobs.

Perhaps Man Utd and Arsenal don’t keep on winning because they’ve stuck by their managers; perhaps they’ve stuck by their managers because they keep on winning.

In an attempt to improve the quality of coaching in professional football, restrictions have been brought in on who can manage Premiership football clubs. Now, only those who have completed certain coaching courses can take up these posts.

This policy was tested when Middlesbrough appointed Gareth Southgate, an experienced player but not fully qualified as a coach. Controversy raged. Would the Premier League bend the rules to make an exception for Southgate? Or would Southgate be forced out?

The League Managers’ Association wanted the Premier League to do things by the book. Having properly trained managers is necessary to take the English game on to the next level, they argued; Southgate should not yet be allowed to manage.

Southgate had his own defence: There are only so many opportunities for would-be managers to get their coaching badges. The courses are run in the summer, the closed-season for most footballers, when they don’t have league matches to play. As an England international, however, Southgate was busy with the national side at these times, so didn’t have the opportunity to take the courses. Every opportunity he has had, he has taken, but this has left him a year away from being fully qualified.

The Premier League accepted Southgate’s defence, allowing him to continue as Middlesbrough manager while he completes the coaching courses. Were they right to do so?

Southgate’s argument certainly seems to show that it isn’t his fault that he isn’t yet qualified to manage. If he wasn’t given the opportunity to take the coaching courses, then he can’t be blamed for failing to do so. What Southgate’s argument doesn’t show, however, is that he is fit to coach.

If the Premier League were committed to raising standards of coaching, and to the idea that the way to do this is to require that all coaches be properly qualified, then Southgate’s defence would be seen as irrelevant. They might decide on other grounds, such as his experience and his progress towards getting qualified, that he can be trusted with the job, but the reasons why he isn’t yet qualified would not make a difference.