Ruben Amorim will face Ipswich in his first game as a manager in England, much like Arne Slot. The Liverpool coach had a better start than most.
19) Julen Lopetegui – West Ham 1-2 Aston Villa
It did not feel like a particularly damning defeat, being separated from Champions League qualifiers by a single goal after an ambitious summer overhaul of both playing and coaching staff.
But with some truly miserable months now in the rear-view, in retrospect it was a harbinger of things to come under a manager who has not done nearly enough to change the culture, philosophy or direction of the club since replacing David Moyes.
Down to the inevitability of Jhon Duran’s winning goal from the bench, the Hammers having spent an unhealthy amount of time to that point fruitlessly chasing the Colombian, it was a poor start to what increasingly seems like a doomed reign.
18) Enzo Maresca – Chelsea 0-2 Manchester City
There was a similar sense at Stamford Bridge the following day when Chelsea hosted champions Manchester City in a game dripping with narrative.
There were almost too many plot points: the clash of bald master and glabrous apprentice; the Cole Palmer and Romeo Lavia return arcs; the latest Chelsea manager debuting in the dugout against the coach with the longest continuous current Premier League run.
Maresca even chucked in another thread before the game by omitting Raheem Sterling from his squad suddenly, randomly and entirely. Chelsea fared well enough before falling to a convincing defeat. Mateo Kovacic scoring against his former club only soured the mood further but it is safe to suggest this game did not offer an accurate view of precisely where Chelsea actually stood.
17) Thomas Frank – Brentford 0-1 Bristol City
Dean Smith paid for a run of three consecutive Championship draws with his job and Frank immediately stemmed the tide, albeit in a sub-optimal fashion. Brentford supporters could not possibly have foreseen their subsequent transformation when Frank started out with a loss to an 89th-minute goal having played for more than half an hour with ten men thanks to silly old Chris Mepham.
16) Nuno Espirito Santo – Nottingham Forest 2-3 Bournemouth
There was a tantalising insight into life under Nuno as Chris Wood assisted and then scored in a thrilling game against Bournemouth, but Dominic Solanke cared not for that particular script and promptly tossed it out with his first senior career hat-trick.
Nuno lamented a “huge mistake” after the game as Willy Boly was sent off in the first half for a second yellow card despite fairly clearly winning the ball. With that and a possible penalty for handball not being given, the club teased their imminent move into social media conspiracies by posting that they had been ‘let down badly by awful decisions again’.
David Coote was not on VAR, no.
15) Mikel Arteta – Bournemouth 1-1 Arsenal
“I am not happy we have not won the game but happy overall. In terms of attitude, desire and commitment it was better than I expected,” said Arteta after his first match as a head coach in any capacity, when he could not give away shares of trust in his process.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang equalised after Dan Gosling’s opener to give Arteta a point against Eddie Howe’s Bournemouth. That sentence makes no sense in big 2024. Thierry Henry was not impressed.
READ: Ruben Amorim already above Mikel Arteta in Premier League manager rankings
14) Marco Silva – Fulham 1-1 Middlesbrough
On humble beginnings this Fulham revolution has been built. The Cottagers had been relegated but managed to improve on their managerial situation, with Scott Parker leaving by mutual consent en route to Bournemouth as Silva took up his first post since leaving Everton about 18 months before.
It was an undoubted coup, just not one made immediately obvious by a draw with Neil Warnock’s Middlesbrough. Harry Wilson scored a delightful goal from outside the area because obviously.
13) Andoni Iraola – Bournemouth 1-1 West Ham
After a summer of bleating about how harshly Gary O’Neil had been treated by nasty Bournemouth, the time had come for the Cherries to show their working out. A draw with West Ham was respectable enough without coming close to confounding the critics.
Solanke equalised after Jarrod Bowen’s opener, meaning that West Ham have conceded decisive goals scored by summer transfer targets in the first game of consecutive Premier League seasons. That feels particularly on brand.
12) Ange Postecoglou – Brentford 2-2 Tottenham
Since his summer 2023 appointment, Postecoglou has made a point of it being his responsibility to “entertain” the supporters after the general misery engineered by Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte. An encouraging but infuriating clash with Brentford in which they opened the scoring and came from behind in their first match since selling Harry Kane to Bayern Munich was a fine taster of things to come.
11) Gary O’Neil – Manchester United 1-0 Wolves
There have not been many more heartening defeats. Wolves had 23 shots at Old Trafford but fell to a late Raphael Varane header before being inexplicably denied a stoppage-time penalty following an Andre Onana brainfade.
It had been a specifically depressing summer for Wolves, who had shed Ruben Neves, Joao Moutinho, Adama Traore, Conor Coady, Nathan Collins, Raul Jimenez and Matheus Nunes without much in the way of actual investment to help replace them, leading to Julen Lopetegui’s exit on the eve of the new season. O’Neil had four days to prepare a performance which dispelled most of those fears.
10) Pep Guardiola – Manchester City 2-1 Sunderland
A victory, but for once that wasn’t really all that mattered. After months of forewarning that Our League would not simply bend to his will and Guardiola would be found out against the sort of proper competition neither La Liga nor the Bundesliga could provide, this was a thoroughly underwhelming start.
The hosts needed an 87th-minute Paddy McNair own goal after an early Sergio Aguero penalty to prevail against a Sunderland side which would be relegated come what May, with the unceremonious axing of Joe Hart from the starting line-up a major point of early contention.
9) Russell Martin – Sheffield Wednesday 1-2 Southampton
As above, just on a slightly smaller scale. Martin arrived with grand expectations and a burgeoning reputation after establishing his playing style at MK Dons and Swansea.
Despite the nature of the game – a side promoted as League One play-off winners hosting a team relegated from the Premier League – it was a deceptively difficult start, reflected by the need for a Che Adams winner with three minutes remaining.
8) Eddie Howe – Newcastle 3-3 Brentford
A high-scoring draw in which Newcastle led but needed two equalisers to salvage a point despite having more than twice as many shots, leaving them bottom of the Premier League in late November, confirmed for many the suspicion that this would be a rehash of his exciting but defensively-flawed Bournemouth reign.
Joelinton scored in a neat indicator of his prosperous future under Howe, who was actually confined to a hotel room with the ‘rona and so happily handed over the reins to a bashful and reluctant Jason Tindall. If Newcastle’s manager would prefer we can instead assess his first game in the dugout: a 2-0 loss to Arsenal the following week.
7) Steve Cooper – Leicester 1-1 Tottenham
An underwhelming replacement for Enzo Maresca upon Leicester’s immediate return to the Premier League as Championship winners, Cooper nevertheless secured an invigorating result in his first game.
That seemed unlikely when Pedro Porro opened the scoring after half an hour, but there is a reason Jamie Vardy feels uniquely suited to winding up Spurs.
6) Kieran McKenna – Ipswich 1-0 Wycombe
In his first game as a manager, McKenna put his Tottenham and Manchester United coaching learnings to the test against fellow League One promotion hopefuls Wycombe. James Norwood scored the only goal to kickstart what has been a stunning journey since.
5) Arne Slot – Ipswich 0-2 Liverpool
Ipswich provided a first taste of English football for Slot, who would have known that while anything but a win against their promoted hosts would have been a disaster, no standard of victory could possibly have dispelled those festering post-Klopp concerns. Ruben Amorim will soon be tasked with managing that same balance.
As it was, Slot pretty much nailed it with that ruthless but ultimately vindicated half-time sacrifice of Jarell Quansah, after which Diogo Jota and Mo Salah scored to mark a humble start to the brave new era.
4) Unai Emery – Aston Villa 3-1 Manchester United
“It was a special day. But we have only made the first step,” said Emery when in reality it was the first of numerous remarkable strides forward taken under the Spaniard. Leon Bailey and Lucas Digne scored in a stunning opening 10 minutes, with Jacob Ramsey almost immediately cancelling out his own own goal.
3) Oliver Glasner – Crystal Palace 3-0 Burnley
The uncertainty of their second post-Hodgson years soon gave way to an unfamiliar sense of exhilaration as a Palace side which rarely scored at all netted thrice in the second half in front of a disbelieving Selhurst Park.
Jean-Philippe Mateta opened his personal Glasner account and there was ample room for a first Premier League clean sheet in four months. The streets shan’t forget February to May 2024, when Crystal Palace were the greatest team in Europe.
2) Fabian Hurzeler – Everton 0-3 Brighton
The youngest manager in Premier League history made an early mockery of sneering suggestions that Brighton were being too clever for their own good when picking their successor to Roberto De Zerbi.
Brighton invested £200m to make Hurzeler’s transition as smooth as possible and it showed: five different players scored or assisted in a thorough dismantling of a decent Premier League side.
1) Sean Dyche – Everton 1-0 Arsenal
Things were different when it was Dyche making his most recent managerial bow. Everton were off the bottom on goal difference alone and winless in ten games. Arsenal were clear at the top by five points with a game in hand and unbeaten in 13.
Utter. Woke. Nonsense. Everton had 26% possession at home and scored with their only goal: a James Tarkowski header from a Dwight McNeil corner. Dyche, that.
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