RANKED: Five Premier League managers who most desperately need a win this weekend

Even by the lengthy and agonising nature of international breaks, that was a long and agonising international break.

With nothing on the pitch to capture the imagination beyond England’s perfunctory inevitable World Cup qualification, we’ve had to endure not one but two press-manufactured sh*tstorms about Jude Bellingham and, most absurdly, furious England fans and their TUCHEL BACKLASH.

So thank the Barclays gods then that this weekend finally, after what feels like several decades, sees the return of Our League and the chance for us all to return to the far more dignified and serious endeavour of trying to get some managers sacked. That’s right, it’s some more words about Ange Postecoglou. We have never been more back.

Here are just five managers who could really, really do with a win this weekend, ranked by how likely failure to do so might see them sacked in the morning, or at the very least facing all manner of unhelpful headlines and cracked-badge imagery and relentless use of the word ‘beleaguered’.

5) Scott Parker

You do feel a bit for Burnley. They’ve had a couple of paddlings, sure, and those are par for the promoted course. Nobody expects any promoted side to entirely avoid paddlings.

Parker himself took that a bit too far, of course, when at Bournemouth he considered 9-0 defeats to be inevitable, but the general principle is sound. Sometimes as a promoted side you will get battered.

But Burnley have been desperately close to some truly eye-catching results in other games, with heartbreaking late penalties costing them points at home to Liverpool and in a relegation six-pointer at Old Trafford.

The encouraging nature of so many Burnley performances, combined with the laser focus of manager-crisis-based coverage to more conspicuous catastrophes elsewhere, has meant Parker has not found himself in the spotlight at all.

But Burnley do have only four points from seven games and haven’t yet beaten anyone who was in the Premier League last season. At some point they really are going to have to beat somebody who was in the Premier League last season.

That can wait until next weekend’s trip to Wolves, though, because it’s another six-pointer for Burnley before that at home to Leeds. Far too early to talk about must-win games, but you do feel the Clarets need at least one win from these two games. Because after that it’s Arsenal and suddenly Burnley could be looking distinctly adrift and Parker therefore in inevitable job-security bother.

4) Arne Slot

Liverpool have been forced to spend the international break in mini-crisis purgatory after a disastrous run of disastrous form saw them disastrously tumble all the way down to second in the league table a whopping one point behind runaway leaders and champions-elect Arsenal, who are infamously simply unstoppable once they get their noses in front in October.

But that mini-crisis will surely escalate to full-blown regular-sized crisis if he makes another bollocks of another game, especially with the game in question being at home against giant-crisis Manchester United.

Of course all the crisis talk at Liverpool is quite daft, but if they do fail to beat what has become in recent years, with all due respect to Spurs, the Premier League’s most reliable banter club then we will tick past a full month since Liverpool last won a league game. And even with an interlull in the middle of that run it would still be quite bad, wouldn’t it?

That would still be a very long time to go without winning a league game, for a team that is trying to win the league.

The other problem for Liverpool, beyond their own tribulations, is that in the last couple of seasons a trip to Anfield has proved one of those occasions where the old 1990s muscle memory kicks in and United produce an actual performance. They’ve escaped Anfield with a point in each of the last two seasons since losing so horrifically 4-0 and 7-0 in 21/22 and 22/23.

A win for Liverpool and the mini-crisis is over. That’s the beauty of a mini-crisis – it’s quite easily escaped. But anything less and there is significant danger of escalation of the threat level. And then it gets harder to reach escape velocity. We estimate it might really be as little as a week before Slot is declared a bald fraud if things go badly. Vigilance is key.

3) Vitor Pereira

Sunderland away has developed an uncomfortably six-pointerish feel for Pereira and a Wolves side that remains the only team in the Premier League yet to record a victory this season. When you consider that the Premier League includes West Ham, you start to realise just how bad that is.

Not even a visit to Dr Tottenham could fully cure Wolves of their long-standing slow-starting ills, but a pair of 1-1 draws before the international break was something at least.

Really does feel like it’s very much time to actually get a win now, though. It’s getting silly, and while Manchester United and Nottingham Forest continue to provide absurd level of cover for Pereira and indeed every other manager in the league, there really is only so long that can continue.

2) Ruben Amorim

Victory at Anfield would surely silence the haters and the doubters for good, leaving Sir Jim’s previously insane insistence that Amorim be given three years at United come what may looking like just a good and sensible idea.

For if Amorim can mastermind a victory at crisis-addled Liverpool he will achieve the stunning and unprecedented feat of winning two Premier League matches in a row.

It’s a staggering achievement, one that belies the talk of United being in some kind of crisis, and one that would instantly elevate Amorim into the pantheon of truly great Premier League managers to have achieved something so staggering as not one but two victories in a row, placing him alongside such Barclays managerial luminaries as David Wagner, Velimir Zajec, Paul Ince and Ricky Sbragia.

1) Ange Postecoglou

He always wins something in his second month, mate. Postecoglou has survived the international break, which was by no means certain when it began, so that’s something. It might even end up being the win.

But it wasn’t exactly a comfortable fortnight, and one that featured altogether too much use of the words ‘Sean’ and ‘Dyche’, which suggests if nothing else that Forest’s top brass have at least stopped sniffing their own farts for just long enough to realise that one quite good season did not in fact elevate them directly to the protected elite and that actually they very much could still get relegated if they continue to insist on f*cking around to find out.

With no wins in his first seven games, a run that has included defeats to Swansea, Sunderland and Midtjylland, Postecoglou is under the most severe of pressure already and with the entire footballing world lining up to scream ‘We told you so’ at Forest if and when they do give in and pull the plug.

And it really might be after this game if Forest don’t show something. Turning a game against Chelsea into a must-win caper for a manager so early into a reign does still feel impossibly harsh, but it’s also hard to overstate just how quickly and thoroughly Postecoglou has burned through any goodwill and wriggle room across some gentler games.

This was a manager who arrived at Forest with absolutely no recent Premier League form to point to in his defence and who never looked the right fit for the squad he would inherit. Forest have speedrun the entire Angeball experience, and really could be in the final throes already. Alas, without the inexplicable European trophy to show for it.