Amorim sacked for Xavi as Postecoglou returns: Predicting nine Premier League successors

The start of a new Premier League season means one thing.

Well, that’s not true. It means several things. But among those things is managers being under pressure, sacked and replaced. It is a tale as old as time.

So we decided to have a little look at the current Sack Race market and then predict who the under-pressure managers might be replaced by should such replacements be needed.

It was going to be a top five, but then there were two managers joint fifth so it became a top six. Then we noticed that the three managers joint seventh were at Newcastle, Manchester United and West Ham all of which felt interesting in one way or another, so it became a top nine.

So nine it is. Always the best number for a feature, in our experience.

We’re not saying all, or even most, of these nine managers will fall. But we’d be staggered if at least a few of them aren’t out on their ear by Christmas. And these are their guaranteed (not a guarantee) replacements…

Newcastle
OUT: Eddie Howe
IN: Jose Mourinho

We’ve been slightly thrown by this one. After years of desperate and very childish attempts from us to manifest some kind of Howe Sack narrative from thin air, we’d reluctantly accepted that delivering the longest-awaited silverware and finishing in the top five to bag a return to Champions League football would end any hope of that for at least several months.

And now a Howe Sack narrative appears to have manifested from thin air. We don’t believe it for a second. Surely not.

But football is football and unthinkably harsh and/or stupid things happen all the time. The sense remains that if Newcastle did move on from Howe it would be from a desire to elevate the brand and the name to the next level, which would mean going down the kind of Elite Serial Winner route that definitely always works and is definitely always a good idea.

It still feels like Mourinho has unfinished business and scores to settle in the Barclays, and probably there will always be unfinished business and scores to settle in the Barclays for Mourinho. Because if he does turn up to finish that business and settle those scores he will inevitably being some new business and scores.

He can’t help himself. And maybe neither can Newcastle.

West Ham
OUT: Graham Potter
IN: Gareth Southgate

It does seem far easier to envision a scenario where Graham Potter gets himself very quickly in very deep trouble at West Ham. He’s not been there long but has no real credit in the bank, while Howe has absolutely loads of it.

We’ve said before that Potter and West Ham are perhaps the most interesting manager-club storyline of all heading into this season, because it feels like the one with the biggest range of realistic possible outcomes.

Potter sacked by October feels entirely believable. Potter winning three manager of the month awards in a row with West Ham third in the table in October feels entirely believable too.

But if it is indeed the former, where do West Ham turn next? They’ve tried Moyes and a Spanish Moyes and didn’t care for either. They’ve tried a coach’s coach. Again, does feel like the next step could be almost anything from anywhere.

Almost every other name we’ve got on this list for someone else also feels like they could very much also end this season in the London Stadium dugout with all bubbles floating around them.

We’re going with Gareth Southgate, though. A man so indelibly linked with the England job is perfect for a club that still bases around 63 per cent of its identity on ‘winning the World Cup’ in 1966. The remaining 37 per cent is split between Danny Dyer, the aforementioned bubbles, and disliking Tottenham. Just if you were wondering.

Manchester United
OUT: Ruben Amorim
IN: Xavi

It does rather look like Sir Scrooge McRatcliffe and his merry band of disruptors might be making another complete bollocks of another summer, which is absolutely delicious.

They’ve managed to sign precisely one first-team player for a squad in very obvious need of far more significant surgery to give the manager they chose knowing full well how his teams played any kind of fighting chance of success.

Matheus Cunha is a wonderful player, and we’re very excited to see him step up to a big club. But there’s also no denying that part of that excitement is because he is a very loose maverick who is liable to do something very batsh*t that, combined as it now is with the Manchester United spotlight, comes to dominate the news agenda for several days/weeks.

And… that’s it. That’s all they’ve managed to do. Ruben Amorim, the manager in most obviously conspicuous need of getting a squad that is his and a pre-season with them is going to get neither of those things. And he’s still going to have Casemiro as his midfielder by the looks of it.

So yes, the chance of another managerial search on the red side of Manchester this season is definitely very, very real, and there are only so many viable candidates for a club with their wild combination of heft and stupidity.

It’s starting to look a little bit like it might almost be an impossible job, on the straightforward basis that anyone who’s actually willing to take it on has already in that act itself proved themselves unsuitable.

So who knows where United turn next if turn they must. We’ve gone for Xavi on the basis that he is currently available and thus doesn’t require buying out of any current contract and does at least have ample experience of dealing with a football club that is ridiculously massive and massively ridiculous.

Wolves
OUT: Vitor Pereira
IN: Sergio Conceicao

Because he is Portuguese and a football manager. Next.

Nottingham Forest
OUT: Nuno Espirito Santo
IN: Edin Terzic

Easy to forget in the middle of a summer when Evangelos Marinakis has been so busy grassing up Crystal Palace to UEFA and throwing a strop because someone found out about a release clause that towards the end of last season he was having on-pitch arguments with the manager who had turned his relegation-threatened club into European challengers.

So yes, while it may seem ridiculous it is entirely fair to say Nuno Espirito Santo is indeed Ralph Wiggum sat on a school bus at this point. Especially if the delicate balancing act between domestic and European exertions proves taxing. Especially as those European exertions will now be at the higher Europa League level.

Simply being in Europe at all raises another problem for Nuno on the ‘victim of own success’ front in that it does mean the potential for Forest to be looking at a different level of manager than they could have considered previously.

Former Dortmund manager Terzic is one such, and a man who has knocked about the top 10 contenders lists for at least half-a-dozen Premier League jobs in the last couple of years.

Burnley
OUT: Scott Parker
IN: Sean Dyche

When Scott Parker’s guileless attempts to bring his new sufferball antics from Championship to Premier League go inevitably and catastrophically awry, why do anything other than bring in the absolute master to show how it’s done. Step aside, McDonald’s Boy. This is job for gravel voices, disc beards and lard.

Sunderland
OUT: Regis Le Bris
IN: Gary O’Neil

O’Neil’s burgeoning reputation took a pretty hefty hit last season, especially when his failure to get anything out of that talented Wolves squad was compounded by Vitor Pereira getting a really quite compelling tune out of them for a really quite extended period of time, but he is still a man who despite limited Premier League experience has received two hospital passes and managed to make a decent job of both.

Bournemouth and Wolves both looked in a dreadful mess when he took over and, while both have now taken leaps forward since moving on from O’Neil they would both surely acknowledge that they wouldn’t be in the position they are without his firefighting efforts.

It’s a very useful skill – and reputation – to have. Every Premier League season now that doesn’t begin with O’Neil already gainfully employed will inevitably see him instantly linked with any club that quickly appears to be beyond all help.

And this season that could be a lot of clubs. For ease, we’re just going with the most obvious here, with O’Neil set in our minds to replace Regis Le Bris as early as mid-September just days after Speaking Well, I Thought on MNF about the avoidable errors the Black Cats made in a 7-0 defeat at Crystal Palace.

Brentford
OUT: Keith Andrews
IN: Kjetil Knutsen

We wish Keith Andrews absolutely no ill will and would be delighted to be proved entirely and decisively wrong on this one, but we simply cannot recall a managerial appointment or set of circumstances more obviously doomed to failure.

The desire for continuity is admirable, but continuity of coaching only really works if you also have continuity of players, and that is not a luxury the Premier League’s biggest clubs are minded to allow Brentford at this time.

The other problem with promoting from within is that it also doesn’t really work if your departing manager takes five of his senior backroom staff with him to his new job and you end up having to promote the set-piece coach.

Sure, we all know that set-piece coaches are the order of the day right now because of that fella at Arsenal who tells Declan Rice to take good corners and free-kicks, but we’re not really sure the set-piece coach is the obvious manager-in-waiting in any sensible coaching set-up.

What Brentford surely needed was a manager with some experience of actual management, and notably of overachieving with a smaller club.

Kjetil Knutsen has done all that and more in his transformative time at the helm of Bodo/Glimt, a club who have come to dominate Norwegian football without any of the usual surrounding unpleasantnesses that come with teams that emerge from basically nowhere to dominate a country’s football.

Leeds
OUT: Daniel Farke
IN: Ange Postecoglou

Leeds’ last successful crack at Premier League football didn’t last all that long but it was absolutely joyous while it did.

The inspirational Marcelo Bielsa got Leeds back into the Premier League and then kept them there with great ease and enormous style. Leeds would eventually finish ninth in the 2020/21 table having given the season many of its most memorable moments.

They scored more goals than fourth-placed Chelsea, and conceded more goals than 16th-placed Brighton.

It all unravelled the following season, but forget about that for now. The point is that the last time Leeds had a good Premier League season, which is also the only time Leeds have had a good Premier League season since the very earliest days of the 21st century, they did it by unapologetically playing front-foot, attack-first-and-ask-questions-later football that led to more than enough memorably thrilling wins to counteract the inevitably dismal-looking defeats that attempting such football at such an elevated level inevitably brings.

In short: it’s who they were, mate.