Each week, Ste Tudor will cast his expert eye over the current state of the Premier League sack race - who will be the next manager to leave their position or be sacked in 2025/26?
Before we focus on the favourites in the sack race it’s worth dropping in on a couple of rank outsiders beyond the 20/1 bar. That’s because their distant odds in the football betting to be the next manager relieved of their post contrasts wholly with their team’s present league position.
Scott Parker at Burnley is a perfect example of this, the Clarets languishing near the foot of the table and priced up at 3/10 to drop come May.
Yet the common consensus appears to be that Parker is secure for the time being. It feels highly unlikely that the ex-England international’s head will be next on the chopping block.
The same goes for Keith Andrew at Brentford, and this is despite the Bees hovering just above the drop-zone, five places below where they stood at this point last year.
The reasons for these supposed anomalies are simple, illustrating that context is everything when it comes to manager odds in the sack race. Indeed, context trumps league position almost every time.
In Parker’s case, nobody expected Burnley to endure anything other than a season of struggle, after coming up with a squad short of Premier League quality.
As for Andrew, this is his first ever managerial role and it’s an extremely tough one, inheriting a side now devoid of Norgaard’s leadership and 30+ goals courtesy of Wissa and Mbeumo.
Premier League Manager Betting Odds:
- Ange Postecoglou - 4/9
- Ruben Amorim - 10/3
- Bar - 16/1
And it is context that leads us to Ange Postecoglou, the hot favourite in the sports betting to be the next top-flight manager sacked.
What context tells us here is that poor results and a lowly league position had nothing to do with his predecessor, Nuno Espirito Santo, getting the boot. Instead, there was an unrecoverable breakdown in the Portuguese coach’s working relationship with Nottingham Forest’s owner Evangelos Marinakis. That’s what did for him.
In fact, Santo’s work in the East Midlands had largely been excellent, guiding the Tricky Trees into Europe last term, against all expectation.
Postecoglou therefore does not have the luxury of being able to transform Forest, to improve them. He has the much more challenging task of maintaining their over-achievement.
Which, to date, he has unquestionably failed to do, overseeing five defeats and two draws across all comps at the time of writing.
Precariously placed 17th in the league table, and out of a domestic cup, Nottingham Forest have no desire to go backwards. Marinakis has no desire to go backwards. They were getting a taste of the high-life and moreover getting used to it. Context.
Not far behind Postecoglou in the betting is Ruben Amorim, a man whose consistent floundering at Manchester United could one day become a case study in how not to manage a big club.
Welding himself to a system that fails to get cohesive showings from his players, Amorim can consider himself fortunate not to be jettisoned already, having overseen a disastrous campaign last season. United lost just shy of half of their fixtures and ultimately posted their lowest league finish for fifty years.
To this juncture the club’s hierarchy have been uncharacteristically tolerant of the ongoing fiasco, clearly having no great appetite to admit defeat and start anew.
But after splurging £200m-plus on attacking talent over the summer, will that frayed patience finally snap soon, with performances still veering from good to atrocious on a weekly basis?
Away trips to Anfield, Forest, Spurs and Palace over the next two months will surely provide an answer.
Next up, there is Daniel Farke at Leeds, a surprise third favourite for dismissal it has to be said, though the German is quite some distance behind Postecoglou and Amorim.
Within the club, allowances will almost certainly be made for Leeds being newly promoted, and having to acclimatise to a higher level of football, but it’s key that the Yorkshire giant competes well at home.
Their last two results have been a draw vs Bournemouth and a loss to Spurs, both at Elland Road.
Beyond Farke, there are four managers, all priced up around the 20/1 mark, they being Marco Silva, Enzo Maresca, Vitor Pereira, and Unai Emery.
From these it is Pereira at most risk of imminent dismissal, Wolves rooted to the foot of the table.
What Is The Premier League Sack Race?
In 2023, a detailed and depressing report by UEFA revealed that the average tenure of a manager across Europe’s top five leagues amounted to just 15 months.
That same year, there were 735 sackings in Europe’s top-flight divisions with the Premier League alone seeing 15 changes of head coach. That lofty figure focuses only on permanent switches, not the appointment of interim bosses, or managers resigning.
Incidentally, what an ironic word to use ‘permanent’ is. Just two years on, none of those 15 appointments are still in their roles.
When assessing the current roster of Premier League gaffers we find that 65% were appointed in 2024 or thereafter while two managers – Nuno Espirito Santo and Graham Potter - have already received their P45 a mere seven games in.
Is it any wonder therefore that football management is sometimes referred to as the most precarious job around?
A lion tamer wearing Lady Gaga’s meat dress has better prospects, and more security.
What’s more, it only gets worse for the present crop because the sacking season is just around the corner, that time of the year when club chairmen collectively press the panic button in the blind hope that it doubles up as a reset.
How Many Premier League Managers Are Sacked?
Across the last 12 seasons, 89 Premier League managers have either been sacked or left via ‘mutual consent’ during the course of a campaign. A notable 51.6% of them had their desks cleared between mid-November and the end of February.
There are two ways of viewing this, neither of them right nor wrong, both subjective.
Should we put sentiment to one side, and the sobering acknowledgment that a man has temporarily lost his livelihood, we could perhaps admit there is some degree of logic to over half of top-flight sackings occurring in this period.
Because, even if employed that summer, a coach has had a transfer window, pre-season, numerous games and three international breaks to implement his methods and mould a team. If results are subsequently going from bad to worse it heavily suggests he is not the right fit for that club.
Alternatively, it could be opined that club owners these days are far too guilty of short-term thinking and that it typically takes a substantial amount of time to turn a team’s fortunes around.
After all, managers are very rarely appointed into a successful gig, complete with a happy changing room and players firing on every cylinder. They get the job in the first place because a team has fundamental issues that need to be addressed as priority before a new direction can be taken.
Regardless, this is the reality in which we now reside in, and furthermore there is another truth that must be recognized.
It is that a domino effect tends to occur. When one goes, another follows soon after.
With sackings taking place especially early this season that doesn’t bode well for those currently in the spotlight, their jobs very much on the line.
*Odds subject to change - prices accurate at the time of writing*
