The Premier League is the most entertaining football league in the world, but it is also the most ruthless. A six-game barren streak for that star striker? Ship him out. A second red card in the season for that young centre-back? Put him in the reserves. As for managers, they only have to put one foot wrong and they’re out of the door.
When it comes to managerial sackings, however, what is right and what is wrong? And perhaps, when is the best time to make a decision on whether a manager has to go or gets to stay?
The early bath
Last year, it took until December for the first manager in the Premier League to receive his marching orders, Mark Hughes vacating the Southampton hot seat extremely late by EPL standards. It could be argued that The Saints has barely improved their league position in the year since his dismissal, but it might also be possible that Ralph Hasenhüttl has given them an identity and shape that his predecessor did not.
Losing a manager earlier than that is high-risk, as Watford have found out to their cost this season. It was on 7th September that Javi Gracia was given his marching orders by The Hornets’ hierarchy, but since then, Watford have hired and fired all over again, Quique Sanchez Flores biting the dust less than three months later. Now Nigel Pearson is the man tasked with keeping Watford in the Premier League. At the rate they’re losing head coaches, if ‘Nige’ makes Easter, we’ll eat our bonnet.
The Christmas present
Many teams’ fans demand that their team’s manager be given the ‘Spanish Archer’ (El Bow) in time for Christmas. Manchester United fans were celebrating in 2018 when Jose Mourinho was out before the Christmas stockings had been stuffed. They, of course, went with a young manager to rebuild the Red Devils into a side becoming their history and stature. Solskjaer is currently seventh of the 20 managers in terms of who will be sacked next as of this morning.
This season, we’ve seen pre-Christmas rockets gifted to both managers of North London clubs, with Mauricio Pochettino (Spurs) and Unai Emery (Arsenal) both going the way of the unwelcome dog at the family feast, namely leaving the top table without so much as a scrap to shout about. They won’t be the last to go.
The ‘It’s not you, it’s me’
The thing about Marco Silva being sacked by Everton isn’t so much that it was a predictable dismissal with the marching certainty of a dose of indigestion after Christmas dinner. Actually, it was exactly that predictable.
The curse of the romantic appointment is that, like every relationship you’ve ever been in apart from the one you currently inhabit, it was always destined to fail. Marco Silva was Watford’s up and coming manager, onto a good thing, playing the style he loved, before he attracted attention of Everton. All of a sudden, Silva was fluttering his Portuguese eyelashes in the direction of theatre impresario Bill Kenwright and before long, a right old performance dominated the headlines. Silva, eventually, went to Merseyside before a bitter wrangle for compensation took place between both his former club and his new one.
Once at Everton, however, Silva quickly found that the same tricks that had worked before had suddenly worn thin. He’d even taken a friend with him in Richarlison, but that ended in tears when Silva was let go by Everton just last week. His true love? Yet to be discovered, but a good morale to the story is that you shouldn’t leave for one club before you’ve finished what you can achieve with another. Speaking of…
The Journeyman
It’s hard to predict when some managers will depart. Who would have guessed when they reached the UEFA Champions League final in May 2019 that just five months later, Mauricio Pochettino would be out on his ear? Certainly not the man himself.
Others, however, have a regularity to their hopeful hirings and subsequent firings. Jose Mourinho may have had a stellar career – certainly if you focus on the trophies rather than the bedlam he leaves in his wake – but he has never seen a job through for more than three seasons. The funny thing is that at every club he has joined, they each see him as the ultimate candidate for change, despite there being 15 years of evidence pointing to the contrary.
He loves his new club, Spurs. He wears their pyjamas, wakes up whistling ‘Glory, Glory, Tottenham Hotspur’ and jinks downstairs for his morning cup of tea like Ricky Villa in his pomp. But the truth is, and even Spurs fans know this somewhere inside that bubble of optimism he is currently floating high upon, in three years’ time, his name will taste like the ashes he leaves behind him in North London. You can bet your life on it.
