With the Premier League fixtures now known and nightmare starts and horror run-ins identified, it also allows us to take a first tentative look at the 2025/26 Sack Race.
Because while in general it remains open to debate whether you’d prefer a tough start and easier run-in or vice versa, when it comes to sorting out which manager might be the first one sent packing, there is a clear preference.
So let’s rank the whole lot of them – minus Brentford, on the surely reasonable basis that we don’t know who their manager will actually be – on how likely (or otherwise) they are to win the race that nobody wants to win.
And here are possible replacement managers currently between jobs.
19) Arne Slot (Liverpool)
There is still a tiny part of our brain that remains stubbornly convinced Liverpool are going to completely f*ck it next season. It is based on essentially nothing, but it sits there nagging at us and just won’t go away.
Most of our brain thinks they probably won’t f*ck it and might even be better than last season, but even that tiny idiot part convinced of pending disaster doesn’t think it could possibly materialise quickly or dramatically enough for Slot to be in any kind of danger before at least one other poor sod has been put out of his misery somewhere.
18) Eddie Howe (Newcastle)
At various points we’ve expended daft amounts of energy attempting to manifest a ‘Howe Sack’ crisis because we’re messy bitches who live for drama. But we’ve never managed to make it stick even a tiny bit and there’s essentially no chance now with Howe the hero of the Geordie Nation for delivering silverware and more lovely, lovely Champions League football.
But worry not; we’ll be back on the case in November, with the same total lack of impact, after a run of two draws and a defeat leaves the Magpies six points outside the top five.
17) Andoni Iraola (Bournemouth)
Among the least sackable managers in the top flight, and the only club we could really picture trying to lure him away this summer was Spurs and that’s now safely off the table.
A big overseas move can’t be entirely ruled out, but we’re still very much in rank outsider territory here.
16) Unai Emery (Aston Villa)
Missing out on the Champions League in the manner they did was definitely a p*sser, and while Villa were perfectly good last season, it was one that felt a bit flat in the end. It was good, but it could have been great. They could have finished in the top five. They could have won the FA Cup. They could even have knocked out PSG.
These annoyances are real and meaningful, but hard to see how they could possibly translate to Emery being in anything like the sort of bother that put him at risk of being out on his ear in the early months of next season.
15) Marco Silva (Fulham)
Won’t be sacked, but could be poached with bigger beasts definitely paying attention. And if that poaching comes from outside the Premier League, then it comes with the possibility of making Silva the first Premier League managerial casualty. But still very unlikely.
14) Oliver Glasner (Crystal Palace)
See Marco Silva.
13) Thomas Frank (Tottenham)
Could it go very wrong very quickly? Absolutely yes. Thomas Frank is a good coach and seems a decent chap, but none of us really know how he’ll operate outside the very specific environment he had at Brentford.
Spurs’ environment is… not like that one. He’s going to have a big job on to sort out an awful lot of mess at history’s funniest ever Champions League qualifiers.
But while the Nuno comparisons are obvious, and a world in which Frank doesn’t make the November international break entirely possible, it doesn’t quite feel like the same situation.
Crucially, there has been no undignified scramble to find a new manager this time. Whatever your thoughts on the timing and manner of Ange Postecoglou’s sacking and the identity of his replacement, it’s also clear Spurs have got the man they wanted in a way they very obviously didn’t when Nuno came in.
That surely buys Frank a bit of time even if things do get hairy. Enough at least for someone else to get canned before he does. Probably.
12) David Moyes (Everton)
Things would have to go unbelievably wrong unbelievably fast, but this is Everton so, you know. Maybe. And there are few things that straddle the blessing-curse divide in football quite like a new stadium.
The benefits Everton should accrue come in the long term. In the short term there’s the loss of familiarity and – something that feels specifically important in this particular case – atmosphere while everyone gets used to the new surroundings.
Not hard to imagine a world in which Everton don’t make a flying start, but pretty hard to picture one in which that leads to a brutal early axe-wielding.
11) Pep Guardiola (Man City)
A sacking remains out of the question despite last season’s (relative) struggles. There hasn’t been a Premier League manager since Fergie in his pomp with more credit in the bank than Pep.
But is there still a distinct chance Guardiola decides he’s had enough and simply walks away? We reckon there is, and it’s always worth remembering that we’re talking First Premier League Manager To Leave here, and that the traditional ‘Sack Race’ shorthand is a bit misleading. Doesn’t matter how they leave, just that they do. And Pep absolutely might.
10) Fabian Hurzeler (Brighton)
Fine end to 24/25 put a different complexion on Brighton’s season than at one time appeared likely. Ending up a clear best of the rest outside the quickly established top seven represented at least a passing grade and they’d have to make a truly awful start to the season to get in any kind of managerial-change bother.
And Brighton don’t make awful starts. They are the Anti-Wolves: they start really well and then fade a bit. Which can be annoying, but is definitely the right way round to do it if you’re a manager trying not to get sacked.
9) Vitor Pereira (Wolves)
As we said, Wolves absolutely love a sh*tbone awful start and enforced managerial change around November. The loss of key players and a disappointingly limp finish to last season after that thrilling run of wins through March and April mean those old doubts nag away.
Pereira should be fine after the work he did in steering Wolves so comfortably clear of any relegation trouble last season, but making terrible starts that leave them in apparent relegation trouble before surviving comfortably in the end appears to now be ingrained in the club culture, an issue that transcends players and managers.
8) Enzo Maresca (Chelsea)
One of the key early-season imponderables for 25/26 is just how big and what kind of impact the Club World Cup has on the way Chelsea and Man City start the season. Does the fact they’ve got plenty of (semi-) competitive games in their legs give them an early boost? Or will they just be knackered and given the runaround by fresher legs?
Dunno, so it’s into mid-table Maresca must slot. He definitely still has some hearts and minds to win at Chelsea despite the fine finish to the season that saw them tick off Champions League qualification while completing their collection of UEFA pots and pans.
A slow start and whispers will begin.
7) Ruben Amorim (Manchester United)
Feels like one could, if one were so inclined, make the case for him being top of this list but also bottom.
Top because United were staggeringly and at times unwatchably bad last season, as well as bottling the Europa League final in truly dismal fashion against planet earth’s most notorious pot-dodgers. Bottom because United have so clearly and determinedly nailed their colours to the Amorim mast that even if they remain staggeringly and at times unwatchably awful they might just stick with him out of pure stubbornness.
What you may notice we’ve cleverly avoided here is any attempt at predicting what we actually think Man United will actually do next season in terms of being good/bad/indifferent. And that’s because we genuinely have not one clue. Could be anything, couldn’t they?
READ: Who will be the next Man Utd manager if Ruben Amorim is sacked?
6) Mikel Arteta (Arsenal)
Probably the hardest manager of all to place as he prepares to lead The Best Team In Europe™ through their Nightmare Start.
While we have no desire to get remotely involved in any of the daft conspiracy-based bumwash spewing forth from the more chronically online corners of the Arsenal fanbase, there is no denying there are teams with easier starts out there.
Not many with easier run-ins, like, but the thing with an easier run-in is that unless we experience a very strange season indeed, that is not a particularly relevant piece of information from a Sack Race stance.
Do we really think Arteta could or should be the first manager out the door once the season begins? No. But it’s unavoidably true that if that Nightmare Start goes they way it might then the title could already look out of reach by October and that will generate inevitable noise and hot air.
It’s far likelier that Arsenal emerge blinking into the autumn sunshine largely unscathed from their nightmare horrors, but again, that doesn’t really matter for our purposes. Arteta’s is a quirky situation where the range of possible outcomes is such that he sits uncommonly prominently in this list but would be even closer to the top of any possible manager of the year list.
READ: Who will be the next manager of Arsenal if Mikel Arteta is sacked?
5) Nuno Espirito Santo (Nottingham Forest)
Not remotely as safe as he should be, really. The harsh reality of just how high Forest flew for much of last season meant the way it ended with ‘only’ Europa Conference qualification has to be classed as a disappointment, and there was more than one reminder along the way that for all that has gone well for Forest over the last couple of years their owner remains very loose indeed and absolutely capable of doing a madness if Forest start next season as they ended this one.
We’re not joking, either. If Forest have eight points after eight games, Nuno could absolutely be in deep doo-doo. There’s also the added early-season headache of those Conference League qualifiers, too, which none of our other European entrants have to worry themselves with.
4) Graham Potter (West Ham)
Really interesting one, is Potter. Feels like one of those with the widest possible spectrum of possible outcomes.
If a time traveller from next May inexplicably used those physics-destroying, existence-endangering powers to come back and tell you about West Ham’s 25/26 season, you would not bat an eye at discovering they had finished seventh after flirting with a Champions League spot for several months, or that Potter had been sacked in October after a 1-0 defeat at Leeds left them 19th in the table and four adrift of safety.
Now that’s in part because you’d mainly be trying to get your head around the sheer reckless pointlessness of that idiotic time traveller, but still. There are definitely a lot of managers we think are much less likely than Potter to last the whole season, but also not that many who are more likely to be the first to get the tin tack. As with Arteta – perhaps even more so – what we’re doing here isn’t quite as straightforward as ‘do you think this manager will do well or what’.
You really do never quite know what you’re going to get from West Ham, a club who are far Spursier than they or indeed Spurs would care to concede.
3) Daniel Farke (Leeds)
It would have made Spurs’ decision to sack Europa League-winning Ange Postecoglou look positively kind, but there remains a decent case that Leeds – and Burnley for that matter – could or even should have thanked the managers who secured 100 Championship points and got them back into the big time and then sent them on their way.
Farke has a dreadful Premier League record of only six wins and 26 points from his 49 games in charge of Norwich, a team he twice led to promotion from the Championship with 94 and 97 points.
As well as fighting his own record in this competition, Farke faces the added burden of expectation levels very different to those at just about any other club that could possibly find itself promoted into the Premier League.
He lasted 11 games of the 21/22 season with Norwich and something similar absolutely cannot be ruled out this time.
2) Regis Le Bris (Sunderland)
Rarely if ever has a manager looked more utterly doomed to ‘victim of his own success’ status than Le Bris, having foolishly got Sunderland promoted by mistake at least a year early.
They finished 24 points behind the top two in last season’s Championship and won fewer than half their matches before pulling Sheffield United’s pants down in the play-off final.
Sunderland appear to be the next – and by no means last – team who will begin a Premier League season with their first main target being just to get past Derby.
They’ll probably do that, but it probably won’t be with Le Bris in charge. The near total lack of expectation on Sunderland to do anything much at all and a not-too-terrifying set of August fixtures is really all that saves him from top spot here.
1) Scott Parker (Burnley)
We’ve said what we’ve said about the futility of fixture-list doom-mongery, about how second-guessing teams this far out is a fool’s errand. But Burnley really do have a horrible start under a manager with a horrible record at this level.
Sure, we can’t possibly know with any great confidence whether Spurs and Man United are going to be better than last year or whether Nottingham Forest will be worse, but Burnley’s early home clash with Sunderland already looks an absolutely vital source of potential early-season respite.
Because that game aside, Burnley have to deal with Spurs, United, Liverpool, Forest, City and Villa before the first weekend of October is out. And Parker may well be too, ideally after a 9-0 defeat against Liverpool that he regards as unavoidable.
We’re also very unconvinced Parker’s new pragmatic approach that got Burnley up will be any more effective at this elevated level than those who attempt to run before they can walk, like your Vincent Kompanys or Russell Martins.