Pep next? Arteta? Ranking the other 19 Premier League managers on how likely they are to quit like weary Klopp

The killer quote in Jurgen Klopp’s emotional video announcing his impending departure from his beloved Liverpool was clear. “I am running out of energy.” Burnout is real, and even a manager with Klopp’s enthusiasm – especially a manager with Klopp’s enthusiasm – can only go to the well so many times. “I cannot keep doing the job again and again and again” was another resonant soundbite.

So which of the other 19 Premier League managers might be most likely to follow Klopp down burnout road? Obviously, we had quite literally no choice but to rank them.

19) Sean Dyche (Everton)
Burnout? He quite simply doesn’t know the meaning of the word. Keep docking points off him. It only makes his Dycheball more potent.

18) Rob Edwards (Luton)
The 41-year-old is already over a decade into his coaching career having retired from playing at 30 but remains a whippersnapper at heart and loving it.

17) Andoni Iraola (Bournemouth)
His message is getting through to a Bournemouth side currently playing some of the most enterprising football in the division, even if the vagaries of the fixture list mean a pair of defeats to Spurs and Liverpool mean it is now over a month since their last Premier League win. Quite why and how we’ve ended up with a fixture list that requires teams to play 427 games in December and three in January is a puzzlement, but the main point is there is no burnout fear here for a man the Cherries took a big gamble on in the summer. If he’s walking away, it’s for something (at least superficially) bigger and shinier.

16) Ange Postecoglou (Tottenham)
No chance, mate. Angeball is still finding its way in the Barclays and a club that has been riven by in-fighting and misery for years is now united once more. Spurs finding themselves in a fight to keep him out of bigger clubs’ clutches now looks far more likely than Ange sacking it all off. One way or another, the era of Ange is at hand. Mate.

15) Roberto De Zerbi (Brighton)
It’s not quite been as good as that first (half) season, but nor are Brighton close to difficult second album territory under the energetic and brilliant Italian. Burnout fears are distant concerns when the prospect of another big beast swooping in for another manager is a far more clear and present danger for Brighton. Brighton being Brighton, though, we almost want to see De Zerbi scooped up by your Liverpools or your Manchester Uniteds just to see how brilliant the next manager they get turns out to be. The immutable law of Brighton tells you that they will, somehow, be even better.

14) Nuno Espirito Santo (Nottingham Forest)
Nottingham Forest is neither Tottenham nor Saudi Arabia, and for that Nuno is currently blessed and relieved. For now at least. At some point he might realise that Nottingham Forest is Nottingham Forest, but until that bum’s rush hits he seems chipper enough.

13) Unai Emery (Aston Villa)
Does carry the air of a man who could at any moment have some epiphany and decide none of this is worth it. We always come back to the suits and the hair with Emery. He’s either the scruffiest well dressed person or the best dressed scruffy person and we can never quite decide which. Same way his surprising frequent touchline outbursts still catch us off guard because they seem out of character but actually aren’t. There’s a duality to Emery that makes him surprisingly enigmatic for that rarest of beasts: a successful high-profile modern manager with no real main character energy to speak of. Which is all a roundabout way of saying we’ve got quite literally no idea where to put him here.

12) Gary O’Neil (Wolves)
Doing very well, isn’t he? After doing very well last season with Bournemouth. Also a classic Spoke Well, I Thought merchant, but there can sometimes be an element of the world-weary about some of his pronouncements. We don’t think he’d sack it all off, but we couldn’t entirely rule it out.

11) Chris Wilder (Sheffield United)
Only been in charge 54 days. Feels much longer. For almost no other human on earth could Sheffield United manager be described as ‘dream job’ but here we are.

10) Eddie Howe (Newcastle)
Being the richest club on the planet but having to slum it in mid-table because of so-called rules and regulations must be frustrating. Being a spokeshole for Saudi Arabia when it’s convenient – i.e. when there’s a World Cup bid to be won – while insisting you’re just here to talk about the football when it isn’t certainly can’t be good for the soul. But it would take quite some big brass balls for Howe to walk away when he must know somewhere deep in his blackened High Performance heart that the next job would be a step down or worse still England. Will be the sixth longest-serving manager in the league if he can outlast Klopp, which says an awful lot about Premier League management job security.

9) Vincent Kompany (Burnley)
Being manager of a struggling team is a tougher brand of Barclays than playing for a brilliant one, it turns out. But burnout still seems some way off for what remains in management terms a giddy young thing.

8) Erik Ten Hag (Manchester United)
At some point he, like all those before him, will come to realise that managing Manchester United is essentially all but impossible for anyone bar a grumpy mind-games genius from Govan. But he’ll probably have been reluctantly sacked before reaching that conclusion himself, because they all take too long to accept the reality that is obvious to the rest of us.

7) Mauricio Pochettino (Chelsea)
Grumbling about the atmosphere in the stadium is never, ever a good sign. Especially when having to be quite so disingenuous about the reasons for said atmosphere.

6) Marco Silva (Fulham)
If we discount Jurgen Klopp, as we now surely must with his departure date confirmed, it leaves Marco Silva as one of only six Premier League managers to have been in situ for more than two years. Which is just plain nutty. Reports suggest he turned down an absolute mountain of cash from Saudi Arabia in the summer, and despite everyone who took the Saudi coin being a little bit underwhelmed when the football turned out to be pub league standard in front of pub league crowds, is being manager of mid-table Fulham really so much more appealing?

5) Thomas Frank (Brentford)
Defying gravity by being a well-run club that does things properly is noble. But it must also be exhausting. This season has been a trying one for Brentford and Frank, especially now they appear set on debasing themselves by treating Ivan Toney’s comeback as that of a returning hero rather than a dafty who let them down really very badly. Could definitely imagine him sodding this for a game of soldiers and turning up soon after in somewhere like Spain to deliver his brand of cerebral football to a new team of ambitious strivers.

4) Mikel Arteta (Arsenal)
Often described as a disciple of Pep for obvious, superficial reasons, but it occurs to us he might have more Klopp in him than we first thought. Performative touchline antics are all very Klopp, and he cosplayed Klopp’s righteous post-Tottenham rage with that laughable performance after the Newcastle defeat. He’s gone past the four-year mark at Arsenal now, which is approaching decrepit in your modern Barclays managerial eras and Sport have already started making mischief by trying to manifest a move to Barcelona into being. First sign that Our League is turning that suspiciously uniform barnet grey and he’ll be off back to Spain quicker than you can say desgracia.

3) David Moyes (West Ham)
You ask how much more could Moyes prove his point at West Ham and the answer is none. None… more prove. West Ham continue to remain resolutely unconvinced about the manager who ended a four-decade trophy drought and has them in the top six. Enormously easy to imagine a scenario in which Moyes decides to ‘take a break’ from football at the end of the season, only to rock up at some crisis-ridden relegation-haunted club or other four months later and declaring at his unveiling that ‘The wife was sick of having me around the place!’ to a guffawing pack of sycophantic journos.

READ MORE: David Moyes out? ‘Pragmatism’ to make way for style as West Ham fans spoiled by Paqueta et al

2) Roy Hodgson (Crystal Palace)
Don’t you think he looks tired?

1) Pep Guardiola (Manchester City)
An obsessed and obsessive perfectionist with nothing really left to prove or achieve in English football. Or Spanish, German or European. Apart from success with a team that doesn’t have the in-built advantage of unfathomable and unimaginable wealth, but sod that noise. Point is, being Pep Guardiola looks very tiring and he has previous for deciding he needs a break. Another year lounging around New York must appeal, even if he publicly remains committed for now to extending his City stay beyond its eighth season.