The ten fastest Premier League manager dismissals as Ten Hag leads current sack race
The new Premier League season is nearly upon us, and that means we’re just days away from some poor sod or other facing kneejerk reactions that they need to be sacked – just like this little lot here.
We’re going by days after the season began, not games. We’re not counting resignations, either, otherwise Alan Curbishley (West Ham) and Kevin Keegan (Newcastle) both walking just a day apart in 2008 would put them in the list alongside Graeme Souness, who quit Blackburn in 2004 to join Newcastle, and Ruud Gullit, who also quit the Magpies in 1999.
10. Frank de Boer: 31 days (Crystal Palace)
Crystal Palace thought they might just have appointed a real up-and-comer when they appointed De Boer as Sam Allardyce’s replacement in 2017.
De Boer had been offered an interview at Liverpool just a few years earlier, after he had led Ajax to the second of four straight Eredivisie triumphs during his reign. Sure, his spell at Inter had been short-lived, but they’d been under-performing for years, so why count that against him?
Well, he quickly showed why. Palace lost all four of their Premier League games under De Boer, including a 0-3 walloping at home to newly-promoted Huddersfield Town on the opening day. Shockingly, a team used to playing Allardyce football struggled with a possession-based Dutch approach.
Palace instead reverted to type with Roy Hodgson, who lost his first three games before getting them into respectable form and – after the scare of another drop-off put them back in the relegation zone – leading them to finishing 11th with a sensational finish to the season.
READ NEXT: Top 10: Reasons De Boer was shown the door at Palace
9. Javi Gracia: 29 days (Watford)
Gracia had reached the FA Cup final with Watford in 2019, but it was Watford so they sacked him anyway four games into the next season.
Then they fired his replacement, then fired his replacement’s replacement, then fired his replacement’s replacement’s replacement, then got relegated anyway. Productive work all round.
8. Scott Parker: 25 days (Bournemouth)
Scott Parker had just taken Bournemouth back up to the Premier League in 2022, and a 2-0 win over Aston Villa on the opening day made for a potentially vital three points with Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool next up on the fixture list.
The manager might have been forgiven for losing all three of those games – which they did – if it hadn’t been for the fact that 1) Liverpool had equalled the Premier League record for the biggest-ever win against them, running out 9-0 victors at Anfield, and 2) Parker said he was “not surprised” about the result after what he saw as insufficient summer of recruitment.
A six-game unbeaten run under Gary O’Neil immediately after Parker’s dismissal and an eventual 15th-placed finish begged to differ.
7. Gianluca Vialli: 24 days (Chelsea)
Chelsea’s 2000 Charity Shield win was Vialli’s fifth trophy in two and a half years as manager, coming after a League Cup, Cup Winners’ Cup, UEFA Super Cup and the FA Cup just a few months earlier.
Six points from the first five games doesn’t feel like sacking territory in light of that, but that’s what chairman Ken Bates decided was appropriate, with a 2-0 defeat away to Bradford especially damaging. In came Claudio Ranieri, who had four respectable years at the club before being replaced by Jose Mourinho.
6. Howard Wilkinson: 23 days (Leeds)
Having led Leeds United to the second-tier title in 1990 before incredibly winning the top flight just two years later, Wilkinson had more than enough credit in the bank at Elland Road to escape the sack for finishing 17th in the inaugural Premier League season, when Leeds were defending champions.
Back-to-back fifth-placed finishes seemed to have Leeds on the right trajectory again, but a disappointing slip to 13th in 1995/96 and a defeat in the League Cup final spelt the beginning of the end for Wilkinson. Leeds had taken seven points from their first four games to open the 1996/97 campaign, but after a 0-4 drubbing from arch-rivals Manchester United at Elland Road, the Whites finally pulled the trigger, bringing in George Graham as his replacement.
5. Christian Gross: 21 days (Tottenham)
We are just going to fulfil our legal obligation by saying the words ‘tube ticket’. OK. Done.
A two-time Swiss Super League champion who went on to become a six-time Swiss Super League champion, Gross felt doomed from his very first press conference, but actually hung on for over half a season and a full summer before Alan Sugar finally had enough just three games into the Premier League campaign – despite winning his final match in charge, away to Everton.
Then-centre-back John Scales said ten years later: “I hate to say it but he was ridiculed by the players behind closed doors. In the manner that the dressing room takes the mick out of everybody, but if you’re a manager you need the players absolutely supporting you and that clearly wasn’t the case. That wasn’t vindictive. He was just a soft target.”
4. Sir Bobby Robson: 16 days (Newcastle)
Sir Bobby had waited his whole career for the chance to represent Newcastle United, and finally got the chance in 1999 after Kenny Dalglish and Gullit were both unable to get them anywhere near the title challengers they had been under Keegan.
After finishing 11th in Sir Bobby’s first season in charge, Newcastle finished 4th, 3rd and 5th under his management, as well as reaching the semi-finals of the 2004 UEFA Cup – but he was unable to get them past the group stage of the Champions League either time they qualified.
There were rumours of dressing room tumult going into 2004/05 after Kieron Dyer refused to play out of position, Craig Bellamy reportedly kicking off at rumours Robson wanted to sign Wayne Rooney from Everton, and the manager’s decision to drop Alan Shearer to the bench for the first time in his eight-year Newcastle career for a 4-2 defeat away to Aston Villa.
That would be Robson’s last game in charge: he was sacked two days later, with chairman Freddy Shepherd saying it was ‘like shooting Bambi’.
2=. Kenny Dalglish: 12 days (Newcastle)
Just as he had in his playing days, not-yet-Sir Kenny had replaced the seemingly irreplaceable Keegan, who had resigned in January 1997 feeling he couldn’t take the club any further.
Robson turned it down, having only taken over at Barcelona six months earlier, but Dalglish was available, less than two years on from having claimed his fourth league title with Blackburn Rovers.
It didn’t work out, because it turns out that replacing David Ginola and Les Ferdinand with a 34-year-old John Barnes and 36-year-old Ian Rush was no way to run a football club with title aspirations. They finished 13th in what would be Dalglish’s only full season in charge, 1997/98 – though in fairness, they did also reach the FA Cup final.
A goalless draw at home to Charlton and a 1-1 draw at Chelsea led Newcastle to dismiss Dalglish – albeit claiming he had offered to step down, which Dalglish refuted, saying he found out he was out of a job through the press and then suing for unfair dismissal. The matter was settled out of court.
2=. Peter Reid: 12 days (Manchester City)
It had taken 29 games for any of the 22 Premier League clubs to make a change in the first Premier League season in 1992/93; Manchester City boss Reid lasted just four in the division’s second year.
City had won just two of their last 11 games the previous term, and continued winless in the first four of the new one, scoring just once in a 1-1 draw at home to Leeds before losing to Everton, Tottenham and Blackburn.
Oxford United boss Brian Horton replaced him and immediately got ten points from his first five games, before old habits kicked back in and City went 16 games with just a single win. A late-season improvement saw them avoid the drop in the end.
1. Paul Sturrock: 9 days (Southampton)
A mutual consenter, in fact, with contemporaneous media reports conflicting as to whether he was sacked or quit, which gives us just enough reasonable doubt to include him.
Sturrock’s reign as Southampton boss lasted just 13 games, with his final match in charge – a 3-2 win over Blackburn – just his second victory in nine after an initially promising start that included a 2-0 win over Liverpool.
Southampton publicly blamed the media for running Sturrock out of town, but were privately said to have been unhappy with his methods and his unpopularity with the fans and players.
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