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There have been an awful lot of managerial changes in the Premier League this season, haven’t there? Yes. And you know what that means. It means we’ve ranked them, because we like ranking things.
Fair to say that not every change has been an upgrade, but some have gone really quite remarkably well. No hard and fast rules here, but in general we’ve glossed over caretakers who took charge for a game or two (your Aaron Dankses, your Michael Skubalas) but included in their own right those who had a more significant spell in charge (the Steve Davises of this world) or are currently in situ because it seems fairer that way.
14) Chelsea – Thomas Tuchel to Graham Potter
Sacking the Champions League-winning Tuchel wasn’t at the time quite as insane as it is now portrayed. There were undeniable signs that he appeared to be losing his mind a tiny bit and it’s not the first club where he’s had a falling-out after a relatively brief yet successful time.
Still, though, Todd Boehly’s reasons did appear to be mainly that Tuchel pushed back against his dafter soccerball ideas and Boehly didn’t much care for an expert having no time for his witless but enormously wealthy and thus valid and worthwhile opinions and schemes. A more pliable candidate was needed, and Graham Potter – having wisely previously turned down Tottenham – inexplicably tossed away everything he’d achieved at Brighton for the Big Six job most obviously unsuited to him and his methods.
He was doomed and will have to repair and rebuild that reputation elsewhere before he’ll get another big job. Either that or accept what he didn’t previously want to accept and take over at Spurs. It is his right as a former Chelsea boss. One piece of advice we would give Potter, that he is free to heed or ignore as he wishes, is this: for the love of god, man, whichever club you go to next please, please, please make it one that has a striker who will score some f***ing goals.
13) Southampton – Ralph Hasenhuttl to Nathan Jones
We had a great fondness for Hasenhuttl, a manager who would occasionally look like a genuine candidate for bigger things (and also a ruddy-faced father of the bride who’d just put three grand behind the bar) and at others would show an alarming propensity to lose 9-0 and then go on a 10-game winless run. It was definitely time to go, though, and Southampton had to do something.
Brilliantly, the something they chose was a superficially confident but obviously painfully insecure manager from the Championship who turned out to be a heady mix of Sherwood, Rodgers and Brent and through his propensity for absurd post-match pontification quickly rose to become our favourite manager.
He was, obviously, rubbish and thus Southampton – forced to worry about trivial things like ‘not getting relegated’ and ‘sometimes winning football matches’ – were, reluctantly, correct to let him go. They better stay up, though, because if they get relegated anyway and denied us all several more months of Jones’ nonsense then we will never forgive them.
12) Tottenham – Antonio Conte to Cristian Stellini
Cristian Stellini, the Twitter Blue Antonio Conte. The Spar own brand Antonio Conte. Conte-lite. Contenuity. The farcical 1-1 draw at Everton bore every hallmark of Antonio Conte, which was entirely understandable and does rather beg the question of what, precisely, Daniel Levy expected by doing the very barest minimum possible in response to Conte’s cynical and self-serving decision to make his position untenable. ‘Conte was right!’ crowed History of the Tottenham Twitter after the Goodison shambles, which was a bit weird given it was in fact his team full of his signings playing his football precisely as ineptly as they had under him.
11) Leicester – Brendan Rodgers to Adam Sadler and Mike Stowell
The defeat to Aston Villa was at least exciting, wasn’t it? Rarely been the issue at Leicester, though, and the Foxes’ new dynamic duo surely can’t be the actual plan to try and avoid relegation, can they? Even they don’t sound particularly up for it. “Until we hear different, Mike and I will continue to give everything for the club,” was Sadler’s post-Villa assessment. Reading not too far between the lines, he seems pretty keen to hear different to be honest.
10) Wolves – Bruno Lage to Steve Davis
The seeds of Lage’s departure were sown at the back end of last season, when a potential push for Europe evaporated in a disastrous final run of results. When those results bled into this season, he was swiftly moved on. Wolves then had to wait for preferred candidate Julen Lopetegui to become available which meant an extended caretaker run for Steve Davis (not that one) and it can be reasonably said that he didn’t make things any worse. It was a gamble to wait on Lopetegui and entrust a fifth of such a competitive season down at the bottom to a novice, but would Lage or a second choice have done much better at that point than a win over Nottingham Forest and a point at Brentford in their seven league games? Probably not.
9) Chelsea – Graham Potter to Bruno Saltor
It’s all a bit of a mess, and leaving Potter’s erstwhile assistant in caretaker charge for any significant length of time – even in what is now a total write-off of a season – appears in many ways an even graver dereliction of duty than what is going on at Spurs. But a drab 0-0 draw against Liverpool is powerfully on brand and means that at the very least nobody can claim Saltor didn’t understand the assignment.
8) Southampton – Nathan Jones to Ruben Selles
We understand it. We get it. We don’t even disagree with it. But that doesn’t mean we have to like it. Jones was going to be one of the all-time great comedy characters in a league that will always need the comic relief to pierce the po-faced seriousness of it all.
7) Crystal Palace – Patrick Vieira to Roy Hodgson (via Paddy McCarthy)
Ah, this one makes us a bit sad. It’s nothing against Hodgson, really, just the fact that it feels like a backwards and retrograde step from a club that really looked like it might be threatening to do more than just survive in the Premier League under Vieira.
The rumblings of behind-the-scenes discontent cannot be ignored and it may well be that the Arsenal legend did have to join his fellow midfield superstars Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard on the managerial scrapheap. But we can’t shake the notion that Palace’s wildly lopsided fixture list fully stitched him up. The winless run that did for him was bad, obviously, but also absurd: Vieira’s final 12 Premier League games as Palace boss all came against the 11 teams above them in the league.
Then in comes Hodgson and of course he wins his first game against Leicester. Who wouldn’t? They will stay up, of course, and Hodgson will get the credit. But there’s no denying he will have done so while playing on easy mode after Vieira had the difficulty rating turned up to 11. Hodgson will face only one side from the top half of the table during his victory lap, and that’s f***ing Tottenham anyway.
6) Leeds – Jesse Marsch to Javi Gracia (via Michael Skubala)
It was a shame really, but the Red Bull Ted Lasso had to go and, while Leeds butchered the timing of it (straight after the transfer window ended, and getting themselves inevitably Dyched without a proper manager in one of the pivotal six-pointers in this season of six-pointers) there can be little doubt now that Gracia is an upgrade, albeit a perfunctory and not especially exciting one. Leeds weren’t quite at the ‘anyone is better than no-one’ stage of a manager search, but Gracia is a savvy and canny operator who knows Our League better than he was perhaps given credit for. It could have been far, far worse for Leeds given the faintly ham-fisted way it all appeared to be handled.
5) Bournemouth – Scott Parker to Gary O’Neil
Scott Parker’s promise of further beatings until morale improved weirdly didn’t go across well, and the hubris of issuing a back-me-or-sack-me ultimatum in the wake of a 9-0 defeat at Anfield suggested a man far too sure of his footing. Really, it was the opposite, though. He was attempting to throw his players under the bus, implying that 9-0 defeats were pretty much inevitable with this bunch of wasters involved. Off he went, and it would be several months before he was able to watch and learn from a master as Antonio Conte showed him how you really pin your own repeated failings on the players you coached and very often signed.
Parker was little lamented, though, and despite failing upwards to Club Brugge and an entirely unearned chance to manage in the Champions League, Parker was soon out on his ear again. O’Neil, meanwhile, immediately snaffled 10 points from his first six caretaker games in charge to land the permanent job. One of the best Premier League stats of the season is that, at one point at the end of that run, the only Premier League team unbeaten since Bournemouth’s 9-0 defeat at Liverpool was Bournemouth. That’s just excellent work and while lifting the mood after Parker’s grumpy denouement was solid work from a manager who probably in those early days benefited from being not that far removed from his own playing days.
Inevitably, the new-manager bounce dissipated instantly upon O’Neil’s full-time appointment, and entrusting a novice with this mother of all relegation scraps was certainly a bold choice from Bournemouth. They’ve stuck with it, though, and while they currently reside in the bottom three there have been enough grand days out to keep the season from being a disaster and they remain very far from doomed. If that 9-0 thrashing had been a mere 7-0 humbling they’d be outside the dropzone right now. Mainly Parker’s fault, then.
4) Wolves – Steve Davis to Julen Lopetegui
It’s rarely been particularly eye-catching, but Wolves’ improvement under Lopetegui has been real, appears sustainable and should keep them in the Premier League. Which really is all that could be asked for. It’s not exactly been Emery-at-Villa levels of attention-grabbing, but Wolves sit 12th in the post-World Cup league table with 18 points from 14 games under the Spaniard. That’s four points more than any of the other relegation scrappers and enough to justify the gamble Wolves took in waiting on Lopetegui to be ready and willing to take over.
They do deserve credit for holding their nerve as they did, because Lopetegui undoubtedly represents something of a coup for Wolves and – unlike the short-termist emergency measures undertaken by certain other teams trying to avoid the drop – is an appointment that could have significant medium- and long-term upside. It was a gamble and it took nerve, and it’s just about paying off. We think.
3) Brighton – Graham Potter to Roberto De Zerbi
Massive bonus points here for making lemonade from life’s lemons and doing such a fine job of ensuring Potter’s years of fine work weren’t spaffed away. The only enforced change on this list and still easily one of the best. Brighton, that. It’s what they do and while we have no wish to see the Seagulls forced to go through it all again such has been De Zerbi’s impact in his first eight months that it may well happen. If not now, then very possibly in the summer. Fascinating to see how Brighton manage to grow stronger from that setback, but they will because they always do. Best way to avoid having to take that route would be to just qualify for the Champions League. Simple.
2) Everton – Frank Lampard to Sean Dyche
Like having to get your dad to do a particularly tricky bit of reversing because you’ve ended up making a complete Austin Powers of it and have begun quietly weeping. It hasn’t been pretty and serious questions remain about what Everton’s long-term plan actually is (doesn’t really seem to be much of one beyond 1. Just about stay in Premier League, 2. Eventually get new ground built, 3. ?????, 4. Success) but it’s less likely to all go to absolute sh*t in the short term.
There are no certainties in this relegation fight for the ages but Everton should be on the right side of the line when the music stops. Gravel-voiced disc-bearded pragmatism >>>> Lampardian Transitions.
1) Aston Villa – Steven Gerrard to Unai Emery (via Aaron Danks)
Sometimes it’s enough to just look at the most basic information and accept that it tells you everything you need to know. Villa now sit seventh in the Premier League with a very decent chance of European football next season. They have gone from a likely relegation fight to the one team able to relax in mid-table to now actually wondering if it can’t be something better still. This was not on the cards during the dog days of Steven Gerrard’s reign, when they had nine points from 11 games. Aaron Danks’ caretaker spell was short yet memorable, delivering a 4-0 win and a 4-0 defeat, while Unai Emery has quite simply transformed the team.
We admit we never saw them being quite this good, but there was always a definite sense of a team that was less than the sum of its parts under Gerrard. Emery has now delivered 32 points from 16 games. Since his appointment at the start of November, only Arsenal and Manchester City have more points – with City only three better off from the same number of games. Under Emery, Villa have amassed five points more than Liverpool and Manchester United, six more than Newcastle, eight more than Tottenham and 14 more than Chelsea. Most impressive of all? They’ve got four points more than Brighton!
