The second international break has been and gone, with the next one inexplicably just around the corner. That can mean only one thing. Well, it can mean lots of things. There are too many international breaks, is one such thing. But for us it’s one thing: which managers might get sacked?
Last season was a quiet one for manager departures, with by far the biggest one of the lot only happening at the very end of the campaign after a six-month farewell tour. But it did prompt a fair bit of early summer managergeddon and does mean quite a few new or returning faces among the 20 men in the race none of them want to win.
All hail the return of the Premier League Sack Race. Here’s a rundown of who’s likeliest to be packing their bags first and who can, for now, luxuriate in relative safety and security.
1) Erik Ten Hag
The brief respite of a spell in second place is over, with defeat at West Ham sending Ten Hag soaring back into top spot. Funnily enough, this was perhaps one result he actually could deny given the absurd nature of the VAR-awarded penalty that did for United at the death, but you don’t become Sack Race favourite on the back of one bad result. United have had many bad results, and the worst thing about a lot of them is Ten Hag’s apparent inability – whether genuine or in misguided attempts at self-defence – to identify them as such.
Three draws from three in the Europa League is not, however much Ten Hag insists, evidence of anything good. Goalless draws at Crystal Palace and Aston Villa aren’t disastrous, sure, but nor are they really things to be shouting from the rooftops. And that’s before we get to the defeats, which have so often been miserable. Liverpool and Spurs have spangled a side that remains relentlessly mediocre while wearing a badge that renders such things unacceptable and unsustainable.
It’s felt like he’s on borrowed time for a year or more now, yet still no hard evidence that an end to anyone’s misery is in the offing here.
1) Russell Martin
We feared it might all go a bit Vincent Kompany for Russell Martin, and four defeats from the first four was definitely a bit Burnley, as was conceding a late equaliser against Ipswich and indeed going down pretty convincingly at Bournemouth and then losing from 2-0 at home to Leicester of all teams. But the good news for the beleaguered Saints boss is that Burnley stuck with Kompany, didn’t they? Right up until he buggered off.
Russell Martin is the next manager of Bayern Munich, is what we’re saying here.
3) Gary O’Neil
Seven points from a possible 57 for the Wolves manager since being (really quite ludicrously, to be fair) linked with the Man United job. A sign of just how far the tentacles of doom can stretch from that accursed football club. After signing that shiny new four-year contract in the summer O’Neil needs a win very fast with Wolves sat bottom of the table.
The performance against Man City was enormously encouraging, while the nature of the draw at Brighton has to be a boost.
4) Oliver Glasner
God bless Dr Tottenham.
5) Julen Lopetegui
Stormed out of Wolves days before the season began a year ago and West Ham is a club that could test the patience of a saint. Really does have some of the very best attacking players outside the Big Six to work with, which hopefully reduces the potential for huffing off at the first sigin of trouble. Which is just as well, because the first sign of trouble has arrived. Giving Ipswich what for helps but getting absolutely thrashed in West Ham’s biannual cup final against Tottenham is about as sub-optimal as it gets for a West Ham manager. A win over Man United is definitely not nothing even if it isn’t remotely what it once was.
The fact a sacking or huffing are equally acceptable in this market does make this feel like it could be a goer, given Lopetegui’s reputation. David Moyes back by Christmas? A third stint for the great man would be some magnificently mid-table Serie A behaviour from the Hammers and one we would not currently entirely rule out.
6) Sean Dyche
Encouraging signs abound now for Everton after that harrowing start. Dyche, for his part, appears so resolutely determined to stay and fight back whatever tides of despair are currently crashing into Goodison Park’s walls that if you didn’t know better you’d think he was positively revelling in all the adversity.
Go ahead, take more points off him. It only makes him win 1-0 more.
We couldn’t see Dyche as the first manager to leave at all when he first achieved favouritism here, but we also couldn’t see them losing 3-2 when cruising along at 2-0 up with five minutes to go against Bournemouth. And enjoying the experience so much that they would then immediately blew another two-goal lead against Villa. Dropping another couple of points from a winning position in a six-pointer against Leicester meant that even getting off the mark feels like a setback.
Everton flipped the script against Crystal Palace, going 1-0 down and winning. A point against Newcastle is solid enough, especially with Anthony Gordon failing from the penalty spot, while victory at Ipswich was their first away from home since December or some such equally ludicrous thing. Snatched a late point against Fulham and it’s now nine points from the last five games for Dyche and Everton. It’s certainly something after the way those first four games went. Which was very badly indeed.
7) Steve Cooper
He has what is technically known as a team that is ‘sh*t’ and is clearly hoping to survive by trying to stay in games for as long as possible and see what can be pilfered. Not every team they play is going to be as naively stupid as Spurs, sure, but a lot of them are still quite stupid and most importantly it does look very much like Leicester’s best/least bad route.
Cooper might not keep them up, but he is new in the job and it’s also hard to see how anyone else they might get would improve their chances. So it probably does have to get very bad indeed before he’s in serious trouble.
A point at Arsenal would have been both incredible and incredibly surprising but it was not meant to be. The Gunners’ pressure finally took its toll in stoppage time to earn a deserved win. The win at Southampton from 2-0 down could be huge.
8=) Eddie Howe
Could absolutely go tits skyward at any moment and there are clearly key figures at Newcastle not quite seeing eye to eye, and it would be fair to say Newcastle’s performances in their first four games weren’t really performances you’d expect to yield a hugely impressive 10 points. That run of fortune came to an end at Fulham in quite emphatic style but the performance against Man City was their best of the season. Should really have beaten Everton and probably Brighton but there’s an undeniable sense of reverting to the mean for Newcastle and it’s not seeing them land where they think they should now be.
Is Howe just leading them down a mediocrity cul-de-sac?
8=) Ange Postecoglou
While acknowledging that if ifs and buts were candy and nuts etc etc. we do wonder what this market might look like had Spurs not managed to twice come from behind and win against Coventry in the Carabao and Brentford in the league. The second half of last season raised more questions than answers about the long-term viability of Angeballl; an uncertain start to this campaign is only causing those questions to be asked louder, and Spurs are ever partial to a whiplash-inducing change of direction around November.
The performance against Brentford was probably Spurs’ most convincing in the league since that 10-game run at the start of the last season, until they went to Old Trafford.
They are obviously well capable of thrashing rubbish like Everton and West Ham when the mood takes them, but they have already p*ssed away eight points from games sensible teams would have won at Leicester and Newcastle and most of all Brighton while also falling into a comically obvious trap in another defeat to Arsenal and gift-wrapping Crystal Palace’s first win of the season. They have been a mediocre team under Postecoglou for far, far longer than they were a good one and there is a growing sense that while it’s all quite fun he might actually be building – at, it should be noted, huge expense – the most ‘Lads, it’s Tottenham’ Tottenham team yet.
Really does feel like if Spurs are happy to go back to the good old pre-Big Six days of being an entertaining but ultimately irrelevant team who’ll have some good days and some terrible days while finishing somewhere between fifth and 10th, then Big Ange is absolutely fine. But increasingly hard to see how playing what at times amounts to wilfully stupid football stupidly ever amounts to more than that.
10) Enzo Maresca
Results are awkwardly not reallymatching the narrative around Chelsea, who avoided complete catastrophe against City on the opening day and have been tidy enough on the pitch since despite the neverending swirl of chaos off it. Big away wins at Wolves, West Ham, and the home dismantling of Brighton have hinted at rich potential for Maresca’s side among all the nonsense, while even in defeat at Liverpool there were encouraging signs to be seen and more still in a Cole Palmer-inspired win over Newcastle.
11=) Marco Silva
Fulham have spent the last couple of seasons in near invisibility in mid-table, which is very much a good thing. Rode out the loss of Alexander Mitrovic really well last season and once again be set for a year of bobbing about harmlessly enough in mid-table.
But it’s getting to a tricky point for Silva, in a way. He’s doing a perfectly adequate job, but almost if anything too adequate for me, Clive. He’s in danger of finding that unwanted zone where he’s invisible to bigger clubs who might be on the lookout for a new manager while by far the most likely way he does get noticed is if things start going very badly rather than very well. The good news is that things are currently going very well, with Silva himself duly going all but entirely unnoticed.
11=) Thomas Frank
Sits quietly in the top 10 contenders for quite a lot of other jobs and does feel distinctly more likely to therefore be a very quick second manager out rather than first.
Brentford did flirt with serious trouble for uncomfortably long periods last season, but there was never any really serious chat about binning the manager who has done so very much for them and it would need to be going really, really badly for that to change this time around, you’d think. Have started this season perfectly well, with the apparent disparity between home form (excellent) and away form (execrable) still in ‘red herring’ territory given the disparity of teams involved. Their excellent home results have come against Palace, Southampton, West Ham, Wolves and Ipswich; the superficially worrying away results at Liverpool, Man City, Tottenham and Man United.
13=) Nuno Espirito Santo
Forest are quite mad so rule nothing out but nine points from an unbeaten five-game start to the season is a huge buffer for a manager whose primary goal at the start of this season was the same as when he took over in the middle of the last: don’t go down. Getting three of those first nine points at Anfield doesn’t do any harm at all, either.
The unbeaten run ended at home to Silva’s Fulham but it’s still a good time to be a Forest fan, as long as you don’t mind mainly being good away from home.
13=) Kieran McKenna
Ipswich spent a good chunk of the start of the summer fending off interest in their manager and a difficult start to the season on their long-awaited return to the Premier League is surely baked in. Glib and simplistic it may be, but the comparisons between Luton and Ipswich and thus Rob Edwards and McKenna are easily made. And Luton never once looked like getting rid of Edwards last season.
Ipswich may still await their first win but there’s been nothing about them to suggest they’re going to spend the season being horribly outclassed every week either. Probably helps them that others down at the bottom of the table are finding wins equally hard to come by and with less by way of mitigation.
13=) Andoni Iraola
A powerful example of what beating Arsenal can do for a manager these days. Bournemouth had eight points from the first seven games, which is okay and no crisis but it’s also not brilliant. And yet that 2-0 win over the title contenders sees Iraola right out at the back of the market with the very best of the Barclays managerial elite.
16=) Pep Guardiola
It would be no great surprise if this is his last season at Manchester City, but it would be a huge one if he leaves for any reason before its conclusion.
16=) Fabian Hurzeler
Another intriguing new face in Our League, tasked with getting Brighton back to where they were a year ago before things just took a turn for the dreary in Roberto De Zerbi’s first and final full season in charge.
They almost completely forgot how to win games in the second half of the season, which isn’t ideal, but the new manager made a quite literally perfect start in ironing out that particular wrinkle and a point at the Emirates is almost never a bad way to drop your first points of the season. Subsequent draws with Ipswich and Forest slightly more niggling, but no real drama. And getting battered by Chelsea is not as humiliating as we thought it would have been two months ago.
Hurzeler has now also made a vital step that all managers who hope to make their way in the Barclays must: inflict hilarious embarrassment on Tottenham.
18=) Arne Slot
Liverpool’s home defeat to Forest stands as comfortably the most jarringly unexpected of the season to date, bringing to a shuddering halt a perfect start to the season that had got a lot of people quite understandably quite excited. The Reds have bounced back well, beating Bournemouth and Wolves and most significantly Chelsea in their first major test of the season before taking a 2-2 draw from an entertaining trip to the Emirates.
18=) Unai Emery
Obviously not going anywhere, despite the minor sting of not managing to land another blow on his former club in between tidy away wins to indicate Villa also have no plans on disappearing. Going 2-0 down to Everton before beating them 3-2 was just cruel, and points to a sinister and unpleasant side to the man we didn’t expect. Not cool.
18=) Mikel Arteta
We’re still a bit in awe of just how quickly ‘Arsenal are 90-points-per-season title contenders now’ has just been entirely accepted and normalised. It’s still barely two years since they were bottling fourth place in really quite pitiful fashion. A lot has changed.
Could this be the season the apprentice finally gets the better of his master? Don’t know, but we are supremely confident neither of them will be the first manager out of a job. No fence-sitting for us.
