The Sack Race has become pure chaos, which we guess is to be expected when the Premier League table itself is just absolute nonsense wherever you care to look.
Arsenal are still hot favourites despite conceding a couple of actual goals at Sunderland, while the silliness literally everywhere else sees Tottenham in the top six despite having five points from six games at home, and newly promoted Sunderland sat looking down on three of the Big Six a quarter of the way through the season, just like everyone predicted.
Manchester United’s redemption has taken Ruben Amorim out of immediate contention, with Vitor Pereira a clear frontrunner before Wolves decided to get rid.
That put Nuno Espirito Santo and West Ham in clear and present danger of both seeking their third appointment of the season already, but he’s pulled off a couple of wins to ease those fears. Even Nottingham Forest have been a different beast under Sean Dyche, and it all leaves Daniel Farke under the harshest glare of the Sack Race spotlight.
Meanwhile, here are possible replacement managers currently between jobs.
19) Mikel Arteta (Arsenal)
An earlier version of this oft-updated piece speculated on what might happen to Mikel Arteta should Arsenal suffer from their Nightmare Start. What if they lost a few early games? What then? We concluded this:
It’s far likelier that Arsenal emerge blinking into the autumn sunshine broadly unscathed from their nightmare horrors. No denying that this season does represent one in which Arteta might completely lose the plot and go entirely off the rails. Or the one where he wins the league by 10 points. Feels like we’re odds-on to get one or the other.
Arsenal emerged duly unscathed, and have already cashed in on the shift to easier fixtures of their own alongside much tougher ones for Liverpool to take top spot in the Premier League.
Only question that remains, therefore, is what Arsenal do from here. We are absolutely certain that it either involves p*ssing the league by 10 points or a complete and total meltdown. Nothing in between is acceptable or even conceivable. And it really is looking more and more like it’s the first one.
READ: Who will be the next manager of Arsenal if Mikel Arteta is sacked?
17=) 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 Next Premier League Manager To Leave here, and that the traditional ‘Sack Race’ shorthand is a bit misleading.
Still, though. Almost no chance at this point that any of that could happen swiftly enough for nobody else to have been canned first. Even if defeat at Newcastle does raise the serious prospect of a second consecutive season without a meaningful title challenge.
17=) Enzo Maresca (Chelsea)
One of the key early-season imponderables for 25/26 was just how big and what kind of impact the Club World Cup might have on the way Chelsea and Man City start the season. Would they hit the ground running, or would they be a bit tired and out of sorts? For both, it’s been a little from column A, a little from column B.
Maresca 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 and then winning the actual Club World Cup.
A home draw with Crystal Palace wasn’t ideal, but the paddling dished out to West Ham has what really should at least be some kind of halfway credible title bid up and running at least. And we strongly suspect Fulham won’t be the last team left scratching their head after losing to Maresca.
There was some talk of ‘Maresca out’ after a draw with Brentford but that was surely only a minority view. After losing to Manchester United in shambolic fashion, there were more on the bandwagon.
That win over Liverpool was big, though, and a particularly good one for Maresca himself. The second half thumping of Forest was handy, too, albeit inevitably saying far more of their opponents than it did of Chelsea. Home defeat to Sunderland saw awkward questions resurfacing, but it’s been three wins from three since then to leave Chelsea quite incongruously second in the league.
15=) Regis Le Bris (Sunderland)
Doing so well that even suffering the ultimate embarrassment of defeat at Old Trafford hasn’t dampened spirits for the most impressive promoted club in quite some time.
Five wins in the bag already, a seven-point lead over Newcastle, and more points than Southampton managed in the entirety of 24/25. Widespread expectation that tougher games would bring Sunderland back down with a bump have thus far proved wide of the mark; there won’t be many teams unhappy at taking four points from two games against Chelsea and Arsenal this season.
15=) Keith Andrews (Brentford)
The continuity candidate in the summer, and looked to have received the ultimate hospital pass. How much continuity could there be at Brentford given they’d sold Bryan Mbeumo, Yoane Wissa and Christian Norgaard, while Thomas Frank took most of the remaining coaching staff with him to Tottenham? It was a very Brentford move to promote from within and we’ll hold our hands up and admit we thought it would go far, far worse than it has.
With Newcastle added to Liverpool and Manchester United on the list of Gtech victims this season, it’s an undeniably impressive start in trying circumstances.
12=) Unai Emery (Aston Villa)
Funny old season for Emery already. Began the campaign right at the outside of this market with your Artetas and – unlikely as it now sounds – Slots. Then jumped right up to third favourite when Villa’s rankling disappointment at how last season ended leaked into a six-match winless start to this campaign.
But then along came four Premier League wins in a row to thoroughly lift the mood at a club where a few short weeks ago it really did feel like they’d come to the end of something special without ever getting the definitive moment of success it deserved.
That run is now six wins in seven Premier League games and has lifted Villa right through the mid-table slop and up into the top four. Three wins in four have a distinctly winnable Europa League campaign bubbling along nicely, too. An astonishing shift from what felt like an inexorable downward spiral not that long ago.
We could all learn something from that, but we won’t.
12=) 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.
It was a difficult summer for Bournemouth but Iraola had masses of credit in the bank that can get him through things like getting inexplicably pumped 4-0 at goal-shy Villa without too much fuss.
12=) Oliver Glasner (Crystal Palace)
Won’t be sacked, obviously, because Palace are absolutely punching with an elite-level manager who is quietly delivering astonishing results in trying circumstances.
But with reports he was willing and ready to walk out if Marc Guehi was sold without a replacement point to new strains on a relationship that is bound to be tested in the weeks and months ahead.
Nailed it in the Community Shield, but as ever for clubs on Palace’s level there’s a positive-and-negative scale to be balanced by your manager catching the eye so conspicuously. Glasner absolutely could be poached with bigger beasts surely paying attention to the work he’s done at Selhurst Park.
And if that poaching comes from outside the Premier League, then it comes with the possibility of making Glasner the next Premier League managerial casualty. But still very unlikely.
We’d imagine the significant lowering of the threat level for a Ruben Amorim Sack at United has eased some nerves at Selhurst Park considerably.
9=) 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.
The win over Newcastle to go with victory at Chelsea to go with a win over City reaffirms Brighton’s big-boy-bothering calibre, but does also make some of their other results – draws with Fulham and Wolves, for instance – a bit annoying.
Still, though. Top six after 12 games is fine work whichever way you slice it.
9=) Ruben Amorim (Manchester United)
Forget everything we ever wrote about Ruben Amorim being doomed; he has engineered a 2-1 win at Anfield and that becaome three wins in a row after a rollicking good fun 4-2 win over Brighton.
A quite silly 2-2 draw against Forest was probably a bigger setback for that lad off the internet whose long-overdue haircut is once again as far away as ever than it was for Amorim, who was backed when things were going appallingly and isn’t about to get canned now they’re going really quite well. Could probably have done without another silly 2-2 draw at Spurs to follow it, but at least it wasn’t yet another defeat against a ferociously mediocre Spurs team that has become the scourge of the Manchester clubs for some reason.
9=) Sean Dyche (Nottingham Forest)
Has done more than could ever have been expected given the chaos he walked into. That epic pants-pulling at Anfield surely leaves Dyche as safe as any manager ever can be in Mr Marinakis’ lair.
8) David Moyes (Everton)
Sounds preposterous, but there really is a non-zero chance Moyes gets punished for easing Everton’s immediate relegation fears and they seek some more enterprising football from a squad that is, in fairness, capable of that. Does feel like a very familiar Everton story, though, and one that ends with them 16th, chastened, and bringing in another firefighter.
We are treating the Brendan Rodgers links with mountains of salt.
6=) Thomas Frank (Tottenham)
It is still early days and still too early to tell which way a vaguely-promising-but-not-flawless start eventually breaks for Frank and Spurs. But it’s starting to look likelier it breaks the wrong way for the manager.
He arrived to a club and squad with an awful lot of mess to sort out at history’s funniest ever Champions League qualifiers. He appeared to have already thoroughly De-Anged the lot of them only for them to then turn up against Bournemouth and defend like an Ange team while attacking like a Mourinho one.
You know who else won their first couple of games, including one against Man City, after stepping up to Spurs from a smaller but less daft Premier League club? That’s right. But while the Nuno comparisons are obvious, it doesn’t quite feel like the same situation despite some rumblings of discontent.
Crucially, there was 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.
But it’s certainly starting to look uncomfortably similar in familiar ways; the small-time approach to big London derbies against Chelsea and Arsenal has not been well received and the fear grows that he just doesn’t understand what this job requires. The fact almost no manager in Premier League history has managed to understand what this job requires is cold comfort at this time.
6=) Nuno Espirito Santo (West Ham)
Seven points from three games against Newcastle, Burnley and Bournemouth leave things looking far comfier than might have been expected for a manager who, when the Magpies took an early lead at the London Stadium, looked to be heading for a second sack of the season long before the Christmas decorations went up.
5) Eddie Howe (Newcastle)
A simply huge and wildly unexpected win over Manchester City. Had Newcastle lost that, as all pre-interlull indications suggested they would, then the spotlight would have been harsh indeed on Howe and his team. They would at that point find themselves slap bang in the muck of a relegation scrap; instead they have lifted themselves back into the mid-table morass where – luckily for them – absolutely nobody is any good at all and the chance of re-establishing themselves in there and even emerging out the top is very real indeed.
There are multiple reasons for Newcastle making such a sticky start to the season and very few of them are directly the fault of a man who did deliver the club’s first trophy in bloody ages last season. That one seismic result against City had vast implications for the title race – in that it confirms there almost certainly won’t now actually be one – but was so big for Newcastle and their manager themselves.
4) Scott Parker (Burnley)
Burnley really did have a horrible fixture list in these opening weeks under a manager with a horrible record at this level, and were given an opening-day reminder by the team that finished 17th last season of just how much harder the ‘simply don’t concede any goals at all’ tactic might be to deploy in the Premier League.
Essentially, Burnley have got back to this level the same way Homer Simpson got to a heavyweight title fight. And Spurs and City have already given them a pummelling.
Victories over Sunderland and Leeds were an impressive and necessary reminder that it might still be enough against teams more on their level, and while a 3-2 win at Wolves was not exactly The Burnley Way it’s still three points against an established – if struggling – Premier League side.
But for all the talk of an encouraging fight from the promoted teams this time around, two of the three now find themselves in the bottom three after a run of three straight defeats. And that quickly builds pressure.
3) Marco Silva (Fulham)
Backed in to a hot favourite as the whispers began before the international break. And it might be time to accept something is fundamentally broken here as a relegation fight bubbles up in what’s shaping up to be a really bad season to lose your mid-table mojo.
Still think both club and manager would live to regret parting ways, but it’s a dicey time.
2) Arne Slot (Liverpool)
Impossible to avoid the conclusion that Slot’s reaction to Liverpool’s mini-crisis becoming actual-crisis was poor. He went Full Klopp with his salty loser behaviour when Manchester United committed the crime of altering their tactics to give themselves the best chance of success against Liverpool, and the headloss continued after another chaotic and unstructured performance led to a 3-2 defeat at Brentford.
Having ticked ‘opposition doing tactics wrong’ off his rattled manager bingo card, he can now add ‘losing his mind over entirely uncontroversial refereeing decisions’ with his response to both the Cody Gakpo non-penalty and Virgil van Dijk penalty at the Gtech.
It has to be a worry for Liverpool that Slot has for the first time in his Anfield career found himself under any kind of pressure after a chastening run of defeats, and has suffered severe and instant headloss as a result.
Funny to think of a manager who’s just beaten Real Madrid in the Champions League being under threat, but defeat at the Etihad was miserable before Nottingham Forest came along and achieved the amusing feat of being the first team to shut Liverpool out in the Premier League at Anfield since Nottingham Forest.
Liverpool are now, hilariously but unacceptably, in the bottom half of the table only a few short months after completing a run of five straight wins to begin the season. They, and Slot, just look unbelievably rattled.
1) Daniel Farke (Leeds)
Surely doomed now, and the hard-nosed yet valid argument persists that Leeds could and perhaps should have taken drastic action in the summer. It would have made Spurs’ decision to sack Europa League-winning Ange Postecoglou look positively kind, Leeds – and Burnley for that matter – might now be better off had they thanked the managers who secured 100 Championship points and got them back into the big time and then sent them on their way.
Farke had 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 in this current era where that represents the most bittersweet of successes.
Defeat at Burnley was honking, but bouncing back to win another six-pointer against West Ham eased the stress significantly before a paddling at Brighton and events elsewhere – including West Ham themselves – left Farke desperately short of immediate cover before a desperately poor show in a six-pointer at Nottingham Forest.
Another painful defeat having gone in front, against Villa this time, sees Leeds drop into the bottom three ahead of a brutal run of games, with Man City and Chelsea next before some hope of respite against mid-table Liverpool.