Why Burnley and Leeds might consider sacking Parker and Farke after promotion

Two of the worst managers in Premier League history have secured promotion back to the top flight. Should Burnley and Leeds be proactive in getting rid?

Burnley and Leeds confirmed their Premier League returns on Easter Monday after Sheffield United’s defeat to the Clarets put the Championship’s top two out in the distance.

The celebrations were understandably raucous but the promoted pair might consider what would be among the harshest sackings ever in preparation for a campaign geared solely towards Premier League survival.

Look, we recommended that Bournemouth axe Parker in summer 2022, a matter of months before they decided that losing 9-0 to Liverpool and taking precisely zero blame for it might not be ideal. So this isn’t completely unprecedented.

And Parker, for all his obvious qualities, is quantifiably the worst manager in Premier League history despite his reinvention in the second-tier as a grizzled clean-sheet hunter.

Daniel Farke has not fared any better across two spells with the entirely doomed Norwich.

His points-per-game record of 0.53 from 49 matches is the worst of any Premier League manager ever; the German is only spared a spot on this list because of the 50-game cut-off point which also saves Vincent Kompany (0.63), Kieran McKenna (0.64) and Rob Edwards (0.68).

It is sensational, by the way, that those managers are, in order, currently 1) managing Bayern Munich, 2) managing soon-to-be-relegated Ipswich and 3) out of work after being sacked by Luton.

Hell, this list of the top ten worst Premier League managers of all time ranked by PPG are currently either retired or managing Torquay, Torpedo Kutaisi, Kidderminster, Sheffield United or Burnley.

The best Premier League managers of all time ranked by PPG are laughing at this sorry lot.

10) John Deehan (Norwich): 0.93 pts per game
Barely surpassing the number of games needed for eligibility on this list, Deehan inherited a fine Norwich side when Mike Walker jumped ship to Everton in January 1994 but the Canaries were soon lost down the mine, losing 26 and winning just 11 games under the man who would take them back down into the First Division; Deehan guided Wigan to the Third Division title in his next and only other permanent post as a first-team manager, which he left in 1998.

9) Neil Warnock (Sheffield United, QPR, Crystal Palace and Cardiff): 0.93 pts per game
Between those four Premier League posts, Warnock only ever completed two full seasons. It just so happens that those were the campaigns which resulted in relegation, with the other two seeing the clubs in question survive after sacking him. The great man earned his ultimately unsuccessful tilts with Sheffield United and Cardiff, and would not have begrudged QPR or Palace their safety after being replaced in January 2012 and December 2014 respectively.

READ MORE: Loveable firefighter Neil Warnock interim era manager jobs ranked amid ‘retirement’

8) Steve Cooper (Nottingham Forest and Leicester): 0.93 pts per game
It is a harsh reflection on a job done so well in sub-optimal circumstances but Nottingham Forest supporters showed their love and appreciation to Cooper in the immediate aftermath of a 5-0 defeat to Fulham, less than a fortnight before he was sacked. The Trees were still outside the relegation zone when the popular manager was shown the door, as were Leicester when that ill-fated and slightly less popular reign was brought to a close after a dozen games. It doesn’t feel like the Foxes will follow the same Champions League-bound trajectory.

7) Steve Kean (Blackburn): 0.90 pts per game
Former Singapore League champion and 2015 Coach of the Year Kean nevertheless had a chastening start to life in management, replacing Sam Allardyce in controversial conditions and proceeding to entirely torpedo Blackburn’s established Premier League status of the previous decade. Forcing Liverpool into sacking Roy Hodgson and beating both Arsenal and Manchester United en route to relegation were genuine achievements.

6) Phil Brown (Hull): 0.88 pts per game
That phenomenal Geovanni-inspired start to the 2008/09 season is doing some ludicrously heavy lifting, a run of six wins, two draws and one defeat to kick off Hull’s first top-flight season accounting for 20 of Brown’s 59 career Premier League points as a manager. That second bite at the cherry seems unlikely to materialise unless he takes Kidderminster up through the divisions.

5) Chris Wilder (Sheffield United): 0.88 pts per game
That 2019/20 season, in which those revolutionary Blades finished two points behind Arsenal, feels like a bygone era. Wilder followed that up with one of the worst campaigns in Premier League history, picking up two points from 17 lockdown games before a handful of meaningless wins precluded his March 2021 exit. Then in December 2023 he and they picked up where everything was left off: with Sheffield United by far the worst team in the division.

Might Wilder guide the Blades to victory in the play-offs and ensure the three promoted sides have three of the worst managers in Premier League history in charge?

4) Iain Dowie (Crystal Palace, Charlton and Hull): 0.81 pts per game
Properly miserable territory now, this. Dowie’s fingerprints were all over relegations in all three of his Premier League jobs: with Palace despite Andy Johnson’s best efforts; guiding Charlton to an unrecoverable position of 20th before his November sacking; and finishing the fine work of Brown when he took over Hull in March 2010.

3) David Wagner (Huddersfield): 0.80 pts per game
One remarkable survival season with Huddersfield was immediately followed by a dreadful campaign which culminated in Wagner leaving by mutual consent after winning three of his last 32 games. It is probably a good job he never took Norwich up because with his and their track records they might somehow have achieved minus points without a deduction.

2) Mick McCarthy (Sunderland and Wolves): 0.79 pts per game
Roy Keane’s best friend is forever indebted to Derby for distracting from just how dreadful a record he has. McCarthy inherited an awful Sunderland side in 2002/03 but between that side and the iteration he guided back up through securing the Championship title two years later, the Irishman lost his first 14 games as a top-flight manager, scoring four goals. Those two Sunderland outfits still rank among the worst Premier League teams ever and while McCarthy did scrape through survival battles with Wolves in 2010 and 2011, he was sacked with them crashing inexorably back into the second tier in 2012.

1) Scott Parker (Fulham and Bournemouth): 0.77 pts per game
Bayern Munich have a lot to answer for, because had they not poached an upward-falling Kompany and sparked a mighty Burnley panic then Parker’s final match as a manager in English football might forever have remained that 9-0 thrashing after which he condemned Bournemouth to relegation, was subsequently sacked and then had to watch complete novice Gary O’Neil keep them up with relative ease. The level of fawning across his two brief Premier League dalliances with Fulham belied some really quite poor results. James Trafford probably won’t keep 28 clean sheets in the Premier League – or indeed be there at all for Parker’s latest push to survive.