We grade every new Premier League managerial appointment ahead of the season - from Andoni Iraola to Xabi Alonso.
Never in Premier League history have so many different clubs changed managers over a single summer – nine new head coaches will take their place in unfamiliar dugouts when the 2026/27 season gets underway, and the record turnover makes it even harder than usual to predict how the following year might unfold.
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With the confirmation of Matthias Jaissle’s appointment at Newcastle, we now know who will be leading all 20 clubs into the new campaign, but not necessarily how the many new faces will affect the final standings.
No doubt some of the new appointments will prove to be inspired and others rather less so. Guessing which might be which isn’t straightforward, but there are always hints as to which managers might succeed to be found in their track record and tactical style – so we’ve graded all nine new coaching hires based on how their history suggests that their tenure might go.
Bournemouth: Marco Rose – C
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Replacing Andoni Iraola isn’t an easy task and Bournemouth have taken something of a gamble on Rose, a man with a distinctly mixed track record in Germany and a few frankly woeful showings in European competition.
He only lasted one season at Borussia Dortmund – although they did finish second in the Bundesliga that year – and while he started well at RB Leipzig, winning the DFB-Pokal in his first season in charge, things fell apart in the 2024/25 campaign and he hasn’t managed since.
Bournemouth have likely appointed him partly because his high-intensity tactical style, which favours a 4-4-2 system, should suit the squad, and partly because he has a reputation for developing younger players. His supporters would also point to Leipzig’s failure to adequately replace high-profile players who were sold as the reason that he struggled towards the end at that particular club, and he certainly shouldn’t take the entirety of the blame. But this is a relatively risky appointment.
Chelsea: Xabi Alonso - B
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Given what Alonso achieved at Bayer Leverkusen, winning the Bundesliga without losing a single match in the 2023/24 season, it’s beyond doubt that he is a superb coach for the right team – but his subsequent spell at Real Madrid made it clear that not every club is right for him.
Alonso struggled to earn the buy-in of an ego-laden squad and must hope that he finds Chelsea’s young and frankly bloated team to be a little bit more pliant. One suspects that the signing of Jordan Henderson was a nod towards the need to make sure that the dressing room had the right kind of characters in it this time around.
If he can get everything to click and get the players on side then perhaps he can replicate the success of his dazzling Leverkusen side, but he faces an uphill task to get the best out of a squad which has been assembled in free-spending but scattershot fashion. Frankly, any coach who takes charge at Chelsea has a tough job ahead of them. Alonso has the chops, but success is far from guaranteed.
Crystal Palace: Pierre Sage – B
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The risk attached to the appointment of Sage is clear enough - his work in the 2025/26 season with Lens is really the only particularly impressive part of a fairly short CV. But what a year it was.
His Lens side ran PSG all the way in the title race and won the Coupe de France for the first time in their long history, and the football he played – high intensity with a back three – mirrors the style that Palace enjoyed so much success with under former head coach Oliver Glasner.
Sage is a very good fit for the team on paper and worked minor miracles last season. Prior to that, however, an ultimately indifferent stint at Lyon was the extent of his achievements in the senior game. Was 2025/26 a one-off, or was he simply showing the world what he can do with the right team? If it’s the latter, then Palace have just made a very shrewd move.
Fulham: Álvaro Arbeloa – D
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It may well be that Arbeloa is an excellent coach, but we’ve given this the lowest grade of any of the new appointments because there’s simply very little to base that assumption on. He may have had a long and successful playing career, but as a coach he has proven nothing as yet.
Last season’s short spell at Real Madrid, when he failed to get the team back to their best after Alonso’s departure, represents the entirety of his senior management experience. He spent five years working with Real’s age group and reserve teams before that, but any know-how he may have with younger players could be somewhat wasted at Fulham given that they have one of the oldest squads in the division.
The Cottagers have taken a massive leap of faith in appointing Arbeloa. He may be a superb coach, he may be a very bad one. There’s simply no meaningful way of knowing – which begs the question of why a Premier League team would make him their new head coach in the first place.
Ipswich Town: Gary O’Neil – C
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It would be a stretch to describe O’Neil as a revolutionary or inspiring choice, but he has already demonstrated that he knows how to keep a smaller team in the Premier League. That alone qualifies him as a solid candidate.
O’Neil did a fine job in keeping Bournemouth afloat before he was harshly (but ultimately rightly) jettisoned in favour of Iraola, and then led a Wolves side which had been diminished by key departures to a comfortable mid-table placing the following year. Those two seasons alone gave Ipswich every reason to see him as a sensible replacement for Kieran McKenna.
The fail case, of course, was demonstrated by his second season at Wolves, when he was sacked in December with the club in the relegation zone. A respectable few months at Strasbourg provide some reason to hope that might have been a one-off. O’Neil is a limited tactician but knows how to help an even more limited squad to guts out a tough year – that might well be enough to make him a good choice.
Liverpool: Andoni Iraola – A*
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Before Mohamed Salah left Liverpool, he fired a parting shot at Arne Slot by telling the press that the club should go back to the ‘heavy metal football’ of the Jürgen Klopp era. Had he stayed put, Salah would have gotten his wish.
Iraola’s technical but direct, high-pressing style of play should suit Liverpool nicely, and he has what is now a relatively long track record of overachievement at every club he’s managed both in England and in Spain. Everything he has done in his career thus far suggests that he is a quite brilliant coach, and one who gets the players on his side quite easily.
There’s a fail case for him, of course, but that may relate more to worries about the combination of his slow start at Bournemouth (lest we forget, he was nearly sacked early on) and the gaping holes still visible in a Liverpool squad which has not been refreshed as successfully as they would have wanted given the amount spent. If he can get his hands on a new winger and a centre-back or two, however, he has all the tools to become a very fine long-term appointment, even if a little patience may be necessary.
Manchester City: Enzo Maresca - A
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Replacing Pep Guardiola at Manchester City is no less daunting of a task than replacing Sir Alex Ferguson was a few miles away – but in making Maresca the next man up, City have made just about as sensible of a choice as they possibly could.
A former assistant to Guardiola, Maresca is steeped in the Spaniard’s playing style and the transition should be relatively smooth on paper. He has an outstanding squad at his disposal (something David Moyes didn’t truthfully have when he took the reins from Ferguson all those years ago) and won’t be presenting his players with a completely new playbook to learn.
He’s also simply a good manager. He did well at Leicester City and remains the only manager to have gotten a tune out of Chelsea since the Roman Abramovich years. He has a tough task, but the odds are that he makes a good fist of it.
Newcastle United: Matthias Jaissle – C
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Jaissle may be unfamiliar to an English audience but he wasn’t picked out as Eddie Howe’s replacement solely because he coached a club also owned by the Saudi PIF – in five full seasons as a manager, he has won six major trophies.
He’s also developed a reputation for his work developing young players, which should be useful given how young Newcastle’s squad is getting this summer, and his high-pressing system, with a lean towards a 4-4-2, shouldn’t represent a significant departure from Howe’s own methods. He may not be a high-profile appointment, but he is a holistic one.
The question, of course, is whether success in Austria and Saudi Arabia can translate to the Premier League. He is utterly untested at this level, and will be taking over a side which has just had the spine of its squad ripped out. It’s a tough job, and it requires a lot of guesswork to figure out whether he has the chops to succeed.
Nottingham Forest: Oliver Glasner – A
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Glasner’s decision to take what was, without wishing to be impolite, something of a sideways step to the City Ground remains surprising – but few Nottingham Forest fans are likely to complain given how well his spell at Crystal Palace went.
An excellent tactician and coach whose intense playing style could suit the Forest squad, it’s hard to imagine that they could have found a much more qualified candidate. This is, after all, a coach who just won major trophies in successive seasons at a team which had never won one in their history before he arrived.
There are two gripes which mean we couldn’t give Glasner an A+ grade, however. The first is that there could be some teething troubles while the squad gets used to playing with his preferred back three, and a 4-1 pre-season defeat to Sporting certainly hinted at a few growing pains. The second is that Glasner has an anti-authoritarian streak and a history of falling out with boards. He could form a rather combustible combination with Evangelos Marinakis, an owner who needs to be handled with the kind of careful diplomacy that Glasner has never bothered with. We’d be surprised if their relationship was entirely smooth. Purely on a coaching level, however, this is a superb appointment.