Some clubs – looking at you, Chelsea and Spurs – have come awful close to making managerial appointments that this season suggests would have been ruinous.
10) West Ham (Chris Hughton)
Five years ago, it was 2019. While a mere statement of uncontroversial and irrefutable fact, it does not quite adequately underline that gulf in time. Five years ago, West Ham had Rafa Benitez, Chris Hughton, Sean Dyche and Chris Wilder on a reported shortlist of options to replace Manuel Pellegrini, with David Moyes under consideration if Everton passed on bringing the Scot back to appoint Carlo Ancelotti as Marco Silva’s replacement. That’ll do it.
That December was a wild old time, and not just in Wuhan. Mikel Arteta and Nigel Pearson were both appointed to Premier League posts to slightly varying degrees of success, while Everton did plump for Ancelotti and leave Moyes as their sloppy seconds for West Ham to pick up.
Things have turned a little sour since for Moyes but few would suggest Hughton could have delivered European glory, Champions League qualification challenges and Craig Dawson to that pocket of East London. He couldn’t even get enough goals out of Mohammed Kudus, leading to his sacking as Ghana manager last month following a winless AFCON campaign.
9) Aston Villa (Thomas Tuchel)
It seems unlikely that Aston Villa’s appointment of a Champions League-winning coach as Steven Gerrard’s replacement would have been described as disastrous in any way. Now, the mere concept of an alternative chapter in Villa’s managerial succession line at that juncture looks unflattering by any comparison with the course they took, such has been Unai Emery’s transformative brilliance.
But it would have been immense fun to see precisely which bridges Tuchel might have burned, particularly considering the possibility came up a single month after his Chelsea demise. The German has summarily failed in his rebound with Bayern Munich and that was after a far longer period of introspection and healing.
8) Chelsea (Julian Nagelsmann)
It was refreshing to see Todd Boehly take a different, more measured and far less scattergun approach to manager searches compared to his attitude towards squad composition. The Tuchel and Graham Potter sackings were necessary sacrifices and an end to the season entirely bereft of any semblance of jeopardy afforded the Chelsea hierarchy time to properly and carefully identify leading candidates to take the club forward; they didn’t use it accordingly but it afforded them the time nonetheless.
The Blues held talks with Ruben Amorim, Luciano Spalletti and Oliver Glasner, while retaining an interest in Abel Ferreira and ruining any relationship they might have fostered with Luis Enrique – who by many accounts was willing to take over immediately in April – by appointing Frank Lampard as interim manager.
They also obviously kept in touch with Mauricio Pochettino, who found himself on the final three-man shortlist after Julian Nagelsmann either dropped out of the running or was forcibly removed, depending on whose account one prefers to believe.
Pochettino has had a mixed reign at Stamford Bridge, but Nagelsmann winning one of his four games in charge of a fairly young, transitional and directionless Germany side – losing to Turkey and Austria in the process – suggests he might well have struggled at Chelsea.
7) Chelsea (Vincent Kompany)
That three-man shortlist makes for incredible if rather short reading a matter of months later. The contenders were whittled down to Pochettino, Celtic manager Ange Postecoglou and Burnley head coach Vincent Kompany, all of whom would soon find their Premier League footing, albeit seemingly only briefly in one case.
“I said I’m not engaging on any of these conversations,” Kompany said when asked about the Chelsea speculation in April, doffing his cap as the consummate professional while Burnley sauntered to the Championship title, the Belgian’s stock only increasing.
It has not even taken a full Premier League season for Kompany to entirely decimate the sort of reputation that pulled him into Chelsea’s orbit in the first place.
6) Spurs (Vincent Kompany)
The same goes for Spurs, who were swimming in pretty much the same managerial waters as Chelsea for most of the summer. Both obviously courted Postecoglou and could not move for mentions of Pochettino, while Nagelsmann and Luis Enrique were looking at flats in North and West London on Rightmove.
Spurs did not quite repeat the rank incompetence of previous manager hunts but they did filter through a number of candidates who took turns in publicly rejecting them while club sources frantically insisted they were never under serious consideration. Tuchel, Amorim, Glasner Sergio Conceicao, Nagelsmann, Xabi Alonso, Arne Slot, Roberto De Zerbi, Potter and Silva were known targets before Postecoglou said yes.
Kompany was more explicit in his rejection than some of his contemporaries, signing a five-year contract Burnley were rather happier to see him sign then than they are not even 12 months later.
Vincent Kompany rejected both Chelsea and Spurs in the summer
5) Spurs (Gennaro Gattuso)
But as implied, the eventual appointment of Postecoglou as Antonio Conte’s permanent heir was not a patch on Daniel Levy’s laughable Jose Mourinho replacement scramble of summer 2021.
Nagelsmann. Conte. Hansi Flick. Julen Lopetegui. Brendan Rodgers and Massimiliano Allegri were all thought to have been lined up before knocking Spurs down. The club themselves considered but rejected Potter, Ralph Hasenhuttl, Scott Parker, Ralf Rangnick and Roberto Martinez; Erik ten Hag famously interviewed poorly for the role.
Then the two individuals Spurs lined up before suffering from a late bout of realisation in one case – hello, Paulo Fonseca – and the threat of actual supporter mutiny in another. Gennaro Gattuso: Tottenham manager. Sometimes maybe good, but almost definitely most of the time…well, you know the rest.
The Italian has just been sacked by Marseille, a post Joey Barton threw his hat into the ring for in what would have against all odds represented a regression in managerial social virtue.
4) Manchester United (Julen Lopetegui)
It was indeed reported that Ten Hag had not ‘blown people away’ at Old Trafford during talks in which he apparently outlined what would be a five-year project to take them back into regular trophy contention. Little did the Dutchman know that was just the period of gardening leave all these sporting directors are going to have to serve before they can rock up at Old Trafford.
Ten Hag was long the leading candidate to become permanent Manchester United manager, often pitched in a race with perennial runner Pochettino. But Lopetegui has been earwigging those conversations for some time now and did meet with the club during Rangnick’s glorious interim reign.
The Spaniard ran scared from Wolves last summer because they sold a few players and has been promptly shown up by Gary O’Neil, so Sir Jim Ratcliffe is hardly ruing his luck at not having Lopetegui in charge of the imminent revolution.
3) Wolves (Mick Beale)
Before Wolves had their brief dalliance with Lopetegui, they spent just over six weeks without a permanent manager. In between Bruno Lage and the former Spain, Real Madrid and Sevilla coach, Steve Davis was in caretaker charge and the Molineux halls have never sparkled so wonderfully.
The outlook is equally bright under O’Neil’s assured hand but good lord they flirted with the apparent catastrophe of sticking Mick Beale’s name on a manager’s office desk plaque.
Beale was identified in October 2022 as the priority pick to replace the sacked Lage, but “integrity” and “loyalty” kept Steven Gerrard’s old assistant at QPR, who had given him his first role in senior management that summer.
“The only reasons for leaving QPR right now would be selfish ones around ego, status or finance,” Beale added; he jumped to Rangers a month later, was sacked within a year, went to Sunderland in December and lasted nine weeks.
Wolves went for Lopetegui instead, then landed on their feet with the best fit of the lot in O’Neil.
2) Everton (Marcelo Bielsa)
Bielsa has not had a bad season by any measure, guiding Uruguay to second in a World Cup qualification group from which pretty much every team advances. But any excuse to recall his rendezvous with Everton is entirely worth it.
Any manager search which culminates in a two-person shortlist of Bielsa and Dyche is frankly ludicrous yet that was the position in which Everton found themselves in their post-Lampard haze last January. While Dyche seems uniquely equipped to handle the restrictions placed upon the Toffees, the same cannot really be said for Bielsa. And besides, they might have appointed him last season and still gone down without him actually taking charge of a game.
Bielsa impressed in talks and was the favourite at one stage but his grand plan, of course, was not to take the job immediately, instead overseeing the Under-21s until the summer while letting his staff manage the first team, giving him ample time and opportunity to prepare.
‘The Argentinian had used Google Earth and Street View to familiarise himself with the location and layout of Finch Farm,’ The Athletic added. ‘He even expressed an interest in living in one of the semi-detached houses next to the Halewood complex’s entrance in semi-rural Merseyside,’ because of course he did.
1) Newcastle (Frank Lampard)
Before Everton took a chance on Lampard, the former midfielder spent his days after the Chelsea sacking being habitually linked with the England U21, Crystal Palace and West Brom jobs before it was revealed each time that he himself had withdrawn from the running.
That he tried the same tactic with Newcastle remains funny; it was reported that Lampard had ‘concerns’ about Newcastle’s ability to stay in the Premier League, with news that Fonseca was about to be appointed purely coincidentally breaking at a similar time.
Fonseca himself was eventually overlooked for Eddie Howe and things have gone alright since. Better than Lampard being given unlimited funds to spend on Mason Mount, anyway.
READ MORE: Lampard to Newcastle only makes sense on one condition
