The new Premier League season hasn’t started yet. We’re still at the point where you’re not even quite sure whether it’s ‘this season’ or still ‘next season’. There’s a long way to go until August 11. Lots to happen. But should we let that stop us starting to speculate on who might be the first poor sod of a manager to lose his job? Absolutely not.
Here then are all 20 current Premier League managers, ranked in current odds order from shakiest to safest in the race nobody wants to win: first boss out of a job…
1) Paul Heckingbottom (Sheffield United)
Obviously it’s all very speculative at this early stage and the reasoning here with Heckingbottom, who was a largely blameless interim manager when the Blades went down and soon after named permanent boss after some brief Slavisa Jokanovic unpleasantness, is that he is the most vulnerable of the three promoted managers to ‘victim of their own success’ syndrome. United’s promotion is neither the fairytale of Luton, which surely buys Rob Edwards time, nor the procession of Burnley, which makes Vincent Kompany’s side that bit more likely to succeed back at the highest level. Heckingbottom sits shakily and uncertainly between the two.
2) Julen Lopetegui (Wolves)
Nearly walked at the end of last season due to fears he’d been sold a pup, and still it feels like he could easily do so at any moment once the season starts and he realises he is charge of a team that famously rarely scores goals but now also has no defence left. A call from Spain – or even Saudi Arabia – could prove mighty tempting. Lopetegui’s prominence here also highlights an important difference between ‘first manager to leave’ and ‘manager who probably won’t last the season’. Lopetegui could easily last the season and three or four more. He’s not the most likely Premier League manager to be out of his job in eight months’ time. But eight weeks’ time? Right up there.
3) Steve Cooper (Nottingham Forest)
Forest rightly stuck with him through the sticky moments last season and it all worked out fine in the end. Makes him slightly harder to sack if things go wrong this season – and means for us he’s probably a bit too high here at this early stage – but far from invincible. Especially given Forest’s start: their first six games are made up of four against Big Six opponents and two uncomfortably early six-pointers against promoted pair Sheffield United and Burnley. Not hard to see how Forest, and by extension Cooper, are in some early soup.
4) Andoni Iraola (Bournemouth)
Any of the new managers could go early this season and it’s reasonable enough to imagine Iraola sits top of that list before a ball is kicked. The brutal nature of his predecessor Gary O’Neil’s axing and replacement inevitably places a greater spotlight on Bournemouth and Iraola than would normally be the case, even if we think they made the right call.
One of the reasons we think it would be fair enough is that if O’Neil were still Bournemouth manager he would be a solid favourite in this market. Everyone knows O’Neil overachieved last season, but there really isn’t a great deal of solid evidence out there to support the idea he would have done so again. That won’t stop people saying Bournemouth – five defeats in their last six games – were flying under O’Neil, though. West Ham, Liverpool, Spurs, Brentford, Chelsea, Brighton, Arsenal also probably not the August and September fixture list a new manager would handpick given the opportunity.
5) Rob Edwards (Luton)
Surely not. Would be the most Modern Football thing ever.
6) Marco Silva (Fulham)
Neither Fulham nor Silva have any apparent desire to part ways, but Al-Hilal’s reported £17m-a-year offer is the sort of thing that can turn a man’s head.
7) Sean Dyche (Everton)
Cannot afford a bad start. Having just about done the necessary and kept Everton up last season now needs to show he and they can do more than that. If anything, Everton have probably waited too long to pull the trigger in the face of mounting relegation threat in each of the last two seasons, but having Dyche in charge makes things even more of a quandary. If they’re going well, then it’s fine. If they’re in trouble, what do they do when they already have as good a firefighter as there is anyway? Maybe, in a way, the worst thing for Dyche (if not Everton) would to find himself blandly mid-table by November. We’re overthinking this.
8) Roy Hodgson (Crystal Palace)
Can’t see this one really now it’s confirmed he will stay on. Also don’t have the worst start. Arsenal in week two is an obvious exception but they start against Sheffield United and also have Brentford, Wolves, Villa and Forest in their eight games before the first international break. Should have reasonable numbers on the board from that lot and Hodgson is not a manager who starts the season under extreme pressure.
9) David Moyes (West Ham)
Won a trophy in his most recent game as a manager. Could still arguably be higher in this list, such is the nature of modern football. The Hammers sit very high on a list of ‘Clubs who could well be in a relegation fight but don’t think they should be’ and that puts a manager under pressure. He was backed, just about, through the whole of last season but we’re about to find out just how much they’re going to miss Declan Rice. Also face Chelsea, Brighton, Man City and Liverpool within the first six games alongside obvious trip hazards in the shape of Bournemouth away and an early journey to Kenilworth Road.
10) Thomas Frank (Brentford)
Far more likely to be poached by a rival than sacked which would already mean he was at worst the second manager to leave. How Brentford cope without Ivan Toney will obviously be significant, but the early signs at the back end of last season were along ‘absolutely fine, thank you for your concern’ lines.
11) Vincent Kompany (Burnley)
Linked with some bigger jobs early in the summer after his impressive work in getting Burnley straight back to the Premier League but was always pretty clear he intended to finish what he’s started. His profile as a player and quality of his early managerial work is always going to be a mixed blessing for Burnley, though. Hard to see them sacking him, not hard to see him inserted straight at the top of the odds for jobs that become available during the season if Burnley are getting things even halfway right.
12) Mauricio Pochettino (Chelsea)
Not hard to imagine how this goes wrong, is it? It shouldn’t go wrong, but you can see how it might. Getting off to a decent start is going to be a tall order for what is going to, by definition, be a new-look team trying to work things out under a new manager. Liverpool wouldn’t be top of your list for the opening day in those circumstances, and West Ham away isn’t much better to follow. There are some slightly friendlier looking games to follow, with all eyes on November 4 at White Hart Lane if Poch can make it that far. And as for the opposing dugout, will it still be occupied by…
13) Ange Postecoglou (Tottenham)
Perhaps the team and manager we’re most excited about watching in the first couple of months of next season, because they feel like the biggest variable. Spurs could be second after eight games or 16th after eight games and you wouldn’t bat an eyelid at either. They might play the best football in the division or the worst. They might have Harry Kane, they might not. They have a manager with a growing reputation and who has succeeded at every new, higher level in his career so far but takes a big leap into the unknown here. Recent events haven’t made being an Australian in London particularly easy, either.
14) Eddie Howe (Newcastle)
Rightly or wrongly, Howe could quickly come under pressure if there is even the slightest hint that he is not the man to lead Newcastle through stage two of their quest for world domination no matter how impressively and swiftly he boxed off stage one. Newcastle have got so many big decisions right since getting all the money, but you still think at some stage there’s going to be a desire to get a Big Name Manager in charge.
15) Erik ten Hag (Manchester United)
Very much into the realm now of managers who are very safe unless things start to go Very Wrong Indeed.
16) Jurgen Klopp (Liverpool)
There were several moments last season when it appeared far from certain Klopp would still be Liverpool manager this season. We can now say with some certainty that he will be. Eye-catching early transfer work has been completed, but Liverpool will have to be better than they were for huge swathes of last season if further ‘Is Klopp’s Liverpool Empire Crumbling?’ beard-stroking ruminations are to be avoided.
17) Unai Emery (Aston Villa)
Won’t be the first manager out. Will be very near the top of the betting in any Big Seven job that comes up. Apart from Arsenal. But that won’t come up anyway, so don’t worry about it.
18) Roberto De Zerbi (Brighton)
Won’t be the first manager out. Will be very near the top of the betting in any Big Seven job that comes up. Especially Arsenal. But that won’t come up anyway, so don’t worry about it.
19) Mikel Arteta (Arsenal)
Trust in the process remains solid. It’s just about possible to envision a scenario where things go badly enough that reluctantly Arsenal feel they have to change course, because they are Arsenal. But just about impossible to envision a scenario where that all takes place swiftly enough for no other manager to have bitten the dust first.
20) Pep Guardiola (Manchester City)
How big an offer from Saudi Arabia would it take, do we reckon?
