Carrick sack, Marinakinception, Spurs unity candidate found: what happens next in Managergeddon
What a glorious season of Premier League Managergeddon this has been, and there’s still the prospect of plenty more to come.
Nottingham Forest have already binned off three managers as Mr Marinakis loses the entire run of himself. To place that effort in some recent historical context, only three Premier League managers lost their jobs during the entire 23/24 season.
But it’s hardly been a lone furrow that the admittedly elite manager-cullers at Nottingham Forest have ploughed. In all, eight permanent managers and all manner of caretaker and interim appointees have been canned this season so far, and with the relegation battle showing promising signs of becoming a right Battle Royale to avoid 18th there could be plenty more to come.
Which is this. This is what is definitely to come between now and the start of next season at assorted clubs that have caught the managergeddon bug.
Nottingham Forest
Having cycled through every flavour of manager imaginable in a virtuoso display of main-character posturing, Mr Marinakis achieves his inevitable final form after an irrevocable breakdown in his relationship with Vitor Pereira three weeks from now and appoints himself head coach.
Against the odds, his brand of intimidation and dread fear proves as persuasively successful in a relegation battle as it did in convincing Morgan Gibbs-White to sign that new contract, and Forest stay up.
His success inevitably attracts interest from rival clubs during the summer, but Mr Marinakis’ refusal to allow Tottenham to speak to Marinakis, who they see as the ideal man to get them back into the Premier League, causes an irrevocable breakdown in the relationship between manager and chairman.
Further differences of opinion between Marinakis and Mr Marinakis over transfer policy and the long-term direction of the club leave Marinakis’ position untenable and he is sacked on the eve of the new season.
Nuno Espirito Santo is appointed in his place.
Tottenham
After three grimly inevitable defeats in his first inevitably grim three games, Igor Tudor has swiftly led Tottenham into the bottom three and himself out of a job. Tim Sherwood spends four unwatchable hours of Soccer Saturday telling anyone who will listen and plenty who won’t that his prediction rate is second to none.
At Spurs, it is now a full-blown crisis. Arsenal-obsessed CEO Vinai Venkatesham sets about sourcing a second interim manager.
Sat in his official Arsenal office chair, sipping thoughtfully from his Arsenal Invincibles mug, the former Arsenal suit realises the problem: Tudor simply hadn’t spent anything like enough of his short time at Spurs telling everyone how good Arsenal are, and had failed to be photographed with a single piece of Arsenal-branded merchandise.
This is Venkatesham’s eureka moment. Knowing how beloved he and Thomas Frank are by the Spurs faithful, he realises that what is required to save Spurs from themselves is a bit more Arsenal around the place.
But Venkatesham is no fool. He knows that while the key qualification for any prospective senior employee of Tottenham Hotspur moving forward must obviously be a deep and pathological love of Arsenal that you constantly bring up, unprompted and however out of context, at this crunch time of the season with survival on the line it would also help for the new boss to know Spurs a little bit as well. Someone who can combine a long-standing love of Arsenal with sufficient experience of the unique delights of Tottenham Hotspur to finally bring everyone together and move the club forward.
Sol Campbell is appointed manager. Spurs are relegated after inexplicably failing to win a single game under such a unifying candidate and come to be known as The Vincibles. Vinai responds to these setbacks as only he knows how: by swiftly releasing three limited-edition commemorative kits, one to mark each of the three draws Spurs managed under Campbell.
Manchester United
Another four straight wins see Man United bow to the inevitable and hand Michael Carrick the permanent job against their better judgement and in full knowledge of what inevitably happens next.
Sir Jim is happy at least, declaring the appointment a significant first victory in the war on foreign managers coming over here and flattering to deceive in their early games as Manchester United manager, and clear proof that English managers can do it just as well as any Jonny Coloniser.
Far more importantly, four straight wins has Hairy Man United Superfan Frank Illet firmly back in the spotlight, and an intense period of study with the FBI-trained Minions fan off of The Traitors has Illet able to far more convincingly lie throughout his monetised livestream about definitely wanting United to win their fifth game in a row this time so he can at last get the haircut he has been entirely free to get at any time over the last 18 months.
“I’ve really got to say this,” he adds mysteriously. “Hair clippers are available from Argos.”
The twin powers of both Carrick’s permanent gig and the haircut grift lead to United coming inevitably unstuck in a Friday night fixture at Bournemouth, with the result prompting all manner of unconvincing puns as the word ‘hair’ is artless crowbarred into the first syllable of ‘Iraola’ in headlines and standfirsts throughout the land.
With further grim inevitability, United fail to win another game all season. After a suitable period of reflection, Carrick is relieved of his duties during the summer, with Iraola promptly installed as favourite to replace him. Paddy Power make Illet 8/1 third favourite, which instantly becomes the lead story on all three red-top football websites on the opening day of the 2026 World Cup.
Brighton
With Brighton sucked ever closer to the relegation fight, patience with Fabian Hurzeler is finally exhausted and he is replaced by Thomas Frank with eight games to go.
A six-game winless run has Frank in trouble before a narrative-laden 1-0 win at Dr Tottenham is followed by just enough 0-0 draws to keep Brighton above the cutline. This clearing of the lowest possible bar with a sensible small club whose name begins with B is immediately used as compelling evidence by tearful journalists wearing I BELONG TO THOMAS T-shirts that Spurs fans are just absolute monsters.
Things soon turn sour, though, when Frank insists on bending everyone’s ear at the training ground talking about how great Crystal Palace are. He duly leaves in the summer to join…
Crystal Palace
In comes Thomas Frank, who immediately endears himself to fans of his new club by turning up to his first press conference in a match-worn Neal Maupay Brighton shirt.
The swooning assembled press agree this is a masterstroke on the part of Frank, and insist he immediately be given the Manchester United or Liverpool job as is his birthright.
Liverpool
Patience and loyalty are dirty words in football these days, sadly, and so title-winning manager Arne Slot is out of a job for no reason other than playing consistently bang-average football following a half-billion-pound investment in his squad, and conceding injury-time winners on the regular.
Liverpool move swiftly to replace him with a beloved, iconic former midfielder who is out of work after leaving an ill-fated appointment elsewhere but due to an admin mix-up accidentally appoint Steven Gerrard instead of Xabi Alonso.
Chelsea
A BlueCo corporate reshuffle sees Liam Rosenior’s job title changed from manager to head coach.
Rosenior is typically philosophical about the change, declaring “In English, ‘head coach’, if you split the two words, is ‘head’ and ‘coach’, so you’re ‘coaching heads’” before saying he considers himself both a manager and a coach anyway and “probably entertainer third” before giving an unprompted 1000-word summary of what ageing Chelsea’s men had taught him about B2B sales.
Manchester City
Pep Guardiola’s storied reign comes to a weary end and he is replaced by Enzo Maresca.
“The city has been colonised by baldmen, really, hasn’t it?” laments Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
