Another award for Worthington

[Huckerbys right foot]

CITY boss Nigel Worthington has picked up yet another top award after outscoring Arsene Wenger, Claudio Ranieri and Sir Alex Ferguson to win the fourth and final Tissot Managers Performance League of the season.

The Tissot League – backed by both the League Managers Association and Sky Sports – measures the performance of all 92 managers in the Premiership and the Nationwide League.

City's glorious drive to the championship – in which the Canaries took 27 points from the final 12 matches, including a seven-game winning sequence - saw Worthington emerge in first place, beating Peter Taylor at Hull City and Northampton's Colin Calderwood to the award for the last quarter of the season.

Chelsea's Claudio Ranieri won the first award, former Plymouth boss Paul Sturrock took the second and Swindon Town's Andy King picked up the third. Worthington was due to pick up his Tissot trophy at Carrow Road today.

Unbeaten Gunners boss Wenger took the overall 2003-2004 Tissot title, beating Chelsea's Ranieri by nine clear points. Worthington finished joint sixth overall alongside Dave Penney of Doncaster Rovers. Ipswich Town boss Joe Royle was 16th for the season. West Bromwich Albion's Gary Megson was ninth.

"Nigel's done a great job at Norwich taking them back up to where they belong," said Tissot League spokesman Lawrie McMenemy, the former Southampton and Sunderland boss.

"He's done it over time with limited resources, which just proves again that managers really make a difference - but need time to prove it."

Points are awarded for everything from home and away wins to clean sheets and consecutive games unbeaten before a manager's final individual total is divided by the number of games his team has played in that period – ensuring that everyone's score is averaged out rather than being biased towards teams playing more games, say, in European competitions or the LDV Vans Trophy.

Organisers claim the final figure represents the best guide to a manager's form – something both directors and fans might like to bear in mind.

"Finally we have a better way to judge a football manager's performance," said McMenemy.

"I think this is a great opportunity to get some common sense into the way managers are judged. Management is not about results this week or last week. It's about results over time, and recognising that there's much more to management than win-draw-lose."