Maresca sack? Current Premier League bosses dominate next Chelsea manager contenders
Never great timing to find yourself in miserable form with an international break looming. They are noted sacking windows and, while Enzo Maresca may only be second on a list of Big Six managers in imminent danger of the tin tack during that October break, the danger is nevertheless real and imminent.
Chelsea have lost three of their five games in September so far, with their only win coming in the Carabao at Lincoln and even that was uncomfortably fraught.
With Benfica and Liverpool to come before the international break, there’s clearly scope for things to get even worst for Maresca, with an anticipated title challenge already in ruins.
We’ve made the point before that Chelsea simply need a less bald manager, and we can’t help but note that the latest top 10 in the betting detailed below is a bald-free zone. Makes you think.
10) Julian Nagelsmann
Seems to always sneak into the top 10 whenever any prominent Premier League job is or soon will be available. But while we remain certain that there is Barclays in the amusingly-suited German’s future, we still don’t think he’s going to turn his back on Germany less than a year out from a World Cup.
A year from now, he’ll be in all the top threes for these instead of scraping inside the top 10.
9) Diego Simeone
We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again. We desperately want this. We genuinely don’t care which Premier League club he rocks up at, but rock up he must. The Premier League needs a proper dark arts pantomime villain of a manager. Nearest we’ve got right now is Mikel Arteta who is a) quite wet really yet also b) a real villain, so it’s way less fun.
8) Unai Emery
Very prominent in the Manchester United market as well, and we do wonder whether he might just be thinking that it’s a bit now or never if he wants another crack at Big Six management. Leaving Villa now just doesn’t look the wrench it would have been even six months ago. All feels slightly like it might be coming to a bit of an end there.
7) Antonio Conte
The new Chelsea manager obviously must have hair, that’s a no-brainer. But that doesn’t mean it has to be their own hair. Or that they necessarily need to be an actually new Chelsea manager. Still seems unlikely, though. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since Conte’s departure from the club back in 2018, but the bridge remains very much burned.
6) Carlo Ancelotti
As with Nagelsmann, it’s simply a question of the timing making it impossible. Even if Ancelotti wanted the job and Chelsea wanted him back, you’d have to be a crazy person to swap a World Cup with Actual Brazil for a club job that comes back on the market every two years at worst anyway. And Don Carlo is no crazy person.
5) Oliver Glasner
A man who may have some pretty interesting decisions to make over the coming months. He’s got a great thing going at Crystal Palace, who are currently third in the Premier League having just downed the champions (again) in what is now an 18-match unbeaten run, and you can be certain he will be very prominent indeed in conversations taking place behind closed doors right now at Chelsea, Manchester United and elsewhere.
Do you swap the current job at which you are exceeding all expectations for a much bigger one at what are far stupider football clubs? There’s all sorts of questions about prestige, risk-reward, potentially reputational damage to consider here. We’d say a chat with Graham Potter might be one starting point for Glasner.
4) Andoni Iraola
Just very clear that neither Palace nor Bournemouth will ever be allowed to rest easy while in possession of managers clearly superior to some of those at Big Six clubs. The Small 14 are simply not allowed nice things. Not for long, anyway.
3) Liam Rosenior
You, like us, may have been initially surprised to see the name of Liam Rosenior so very high on this list above so many seemingly far more plausible names. You, like us, may then have twigged that he is currently the manager of Strasbourg, and thus everything makes sense.
2) Xavi
Definitely going to be a Premier League manager at some point quite soon, we reckon, and interestingly the only manager in this top 10 who isn’t currently employed elsewhere. But is Chelsea in any way the right place for a man with a stated preference for a project he can really get his teeth into? When professing his love for the Premier League he talked about wanting four years at a club to really stamp his mark on them.
No Chelsea manager has lasted four years since the 1980s, long before football was invented and back when Stamford Bridge was still 27 per cent car park.
1) Marco Silva
With Thomas Frank having now moved on from Doing An Excellent Job There at Brentford, Silva forms the Premier League’s decided trio of managers Doing An Excellent Job There alongside Glasner and Iraola. Probably does deserve a chance at one of the big clubs given the body of work he has now in the Premier League, but he’s a very flaky favourite here for one that just doesn’t feel quite the right fit.
Where we would make him a more compelling favourite is for Villa after Emery takes one of the two Big Six jobs about to come on the market.
