Van Nistelrooy still clear Sack Race favourite but even silverware can’t save Postecoglou now

Ivan Juric couldn’t survive Southampton’s total failure to survive and became the seventh managerial casualty of the Premier League season, and there’s still just about time for at least one more to go before the curtain comes down on what has been without doubt a curious season in more ways than one.

1) Ruud van Nistelrooy
Didn’t ever feel as though there would be much of a honeymoon period incoming for a man who has already been in charge for two hefty Leicester defeats this season and beating West Ham 3-1 if anything cast more doubt over his ability to keep them up this season. Drawing with Brighton is a positive, getting pumped by Newcastle is not and getting pumped by Wolves is definitely not, even though defeats to Liverpool and even this reduced version of Man City are forgivable.

Further defeats to Aston Villa and Crystal Palace saw the new-manager bounce come and go without lifting Leicester up the table. Winning El Sackico at Spurs bought the Manchester United legend some time; time he promptly p*ssed immediately away by getting smashed silly at Everton with that win at Spurs increasingly looking like a very funny but very extreme outlier.

With Leicester’s relegation confirmed and Van Nistelrooy surely unlikely to lead the bid to bring them back to the Premier League, it all for this specific market becomes a question of whether the axe is wielded before the final day of the season or not.

2) No manager to leave
This is obviously a very live contender now, because it’s late April as much as anything else, but it still feels like it’s just too possible for at least one of the bumbling big clubs to go slightly early with a change that is absolutely coming in the summer. For instance…

3) Ange Postecoglou
It’s felt like Europa League or bust for a long time now, but things continue to unravel and disintegrate to the point that even winning that would surely no longer be enough to save him. And that’s if you can even imagine Spurs actually managing to win the Europa League against everything we know about the club, the brand, and above all else their current atrocious football.

There’s even a case to make that winning the Europa League makes Ange less rather than more secure. It’s a million per cent clear that his whole schtick is utterly unworkable over the course of an entire league season – really is important to remember Spurs were utter sh*t for the last two-thirds of last season as well as the entirety of this one – and the only reason to keep him is in the hope that enough of the admittedly excellent good days his daft teams will deliver happen to land in the same cup competition at the right moments to end the absurd trophy drought that hangs around this club’s neck like a gigantic banter albatross.

If he actually somehow pulls a Homer and delivers that promised second-season silverware, then what’s the point of keeping a manager you know cannot succeed in the league?

In summary, then: if Spurs don’t win the Europa League, he’s done for. If Spurs win the Europa League, he is almost certainly still done for. It sounds harsh when you put it like that, but there is a very real chance now that Spurs actually finish 17th in the league and that’s just silly.

4) Enzo Maresca
Results awkwardly didn’t really match the narrative around Chelsea for the first half of the season with the team looking increasingly tidy on the pitch since despite the never-ending swirl of chaos off it.

Big away wins at Wolves, West Ham, and the home dismantling of Brighton hinted at rich potential for Maresca’s side among all the nonsense, while even in defeat at Liverpool there were encouraging signs to be seen and more still in a Cole Palmer-inspired win over Newcastle and a pretty serious paddling of Aston Villa before bantering Spurs off in familiarly ridiculous fashion.

But it’s all gone a bit wrong now. On the bright side, it has proved Maresca right about that whole ‘not title contenders’ line he’d been peddling. Going out of the FA Cup at Brighton wasn’t great, and nor was pretending there was anything good about it afterwards. Too small-time for Chelsea tastes, that, re-igniting those old concerns from way back in the summer.

And there is absolutely no getting away from the fact that if you talk about being pleased to be able to concentrate on the league and then promptly get absolutely paddled 3-0 by the same team you just lost to in the cup, then it will make you look like a bit of a wally. They didn’t play that badly at Villa, but it was another costly loss to a direct rival that exposed assorted flaws in that expensively assembled squad.

They now also have to face the indignity of having failed to beat Ipswich home or away and also the very real and valid criticism that they haven’t beaten a single decent football team in 2025. We’re serious. Look at their results if you don’t believe us. Their only wins in 2025 have been against Morecambe, Wolves (and January Wolves were a very different team to the one we see now), West Ham, Southampton, Copenhagen, Leicester, Tottenham and Legia Warsaw.

Will Chelsea get rid before the season is finished? Seems very unlikely. Another summer change of direction? Far more plausible now than it was a couple of months ago.

5) Ruben Amorim
It was always going to be a long job to mould this recalcitrant United squad to Amorim’s ways, but it’s been distinctly choppy thus far.

We’ve noted this elsewhere, but Amorim’s United can only be at all relied on in three specific types of game: Europa League, against the worst bottom three in Premier League history, and in game-raising We Are Still Manchester United performances against their former rivals Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and City. Against everyone else – and that does leave an awful lot else – they are so often just miserably poor with a thrashing at Newcastle the latest abysmal humbling.

For a man apparently blessed with bountiful self-confidence, responding to United’s obvious ‘now or never’ bluff by going ‘Okay, better be now then’ rather than ‘LOL, okay, let’s talk in the summer’ is beginning to look like a tactical error on Amorim’s part.

Watching his injury-ravaged side look so, so poor in El Crapico at Tottenham was to be struck by the fact this is a team who could yet finish below even those complete idiots. And also below Everton. And also below West Ham. And now possibly even below resurgent Wolves. And nobody is really even surprised any more. This Is Manchester United Football Club We’re Talking About for goodness’ sake. And they could genuinely finish 17th! Seventeenth! Nobody cares! What is going on?

Amorim’s quotability remains undimmed and his assessment that not even winning the Europa League will save United’s season because nothing can save it has a certain undeniable stark truth to it, but does make it sound a bit like he’s already regretting the questionable life choices that have led him and United to this miserable point.

Who will be the next Man Utd manager if Ruben Amorim is sacked?

6=) Kieran McKenna
Ipswich spent a good chunk of the start of the summer fending off interest in their manager and a difficult start to the season on their long-awaited return to the Premier League is surely baked in. Glib and simplistic it may be, but the comparisons between Luton and Ipswich and thus Rob Edwards and McKenna are easily made. And Luton never once looked like getting rid of Edwards (last season at least).

Ipswich may only have fourvwins but they’re not going around being horribly outclassed every week either. It’s the most backhanded of compliments, but they are definitely less bad than the other two teams heading back to the Championship. There will still be bad days, as against Newcastle and City, but these are not the days that need define Ipswich or McKenna.

Losing at home to Southampton is a bit more that kind of day, to be fair, but the truth remains: it’s still hard to imagine a world in which Ipswich bin McKenna and improve. And most importantly given their now obvious fate that extends to next season as well; who better to get them up again for a more wise-headed crack at Premier League survival next time?

6=) Pep Guardiola
A recovery of sorts from the very worst of the late 2024 calamity always carried with it some alarming fragility and the nature of City’s chaotic 5-1 humbling at Arsenal and subsequent Champions League fumblings against Real Madrid have to at least raise again the spectre of Pep deciding to sod it all for a game of soldiers. Still, though, feels like that is something that only happens in the summer and absolutely not before.

8=) Vitor Pereira
Has got Wolves playing as well as anyone in the land right now. The threat of relegation is but a lingering memory and they’re now moving so fast they’ve entirely swallowed up the gaggle of ropey big clubs enormously grateful for how sh*te the bottom three are – your Tottenhams, your West Hams, your Evertons, the Manchester Uniteds of this world – and set to see out the season in a respectable enough lower-mid-table spot.

And it’s still good fun to watch the press lads try to pretend that this unassuming Jonny Foreigner hasn’t really made Wolves any better than PFM Gary O’Neil did, even though he has clearly made them miles and miles better. Sometimes we like to imagine how Martin Samuel and the lads would be reacting had Pereira taken Wolves to 19th and five points from safety only for O’Neil to come in and propel them to mid-table.

8=) Graham Potter
Back in the game and back in the Sack Race. But surely not any kind of contender now the Hammers are safely clear of any relegation unpleasantness having performed a title-race-impacting mischief at the Emirates for the second season running. Could definitely be a big runner in next season’s race, though, if West Ham’s miserable end to this season translates into a sluggish start to next.

8=) Fabian Hurzeler
Until Brighton decide once and for all whether they and by extension Hurzeler are any good or not, it’s simply impossible for the rest of us to form any opinion.

11=) Mikel Arteta
A significant early mover in the wake of Dyche and Lopetegui’s departures, a painful Carabao semi-final first-leg defeat at home to Newcastle and an even dodgier FA Cup exit at home to Manchester United. Arteta suddenly appeared a man under a bit of pressure as routes to long overdue silverware start to close off yet again.

Even smashing Man City to pieces is slightly bittersweet when it does so relatively little to improve Arsenal’s chances of Premier League success. It stopped any chat about his immediate future, but there is definitely a greater focus now on the lack of silverware to go with the undeniably huge strides the Gunners have taken under Arteta. Maybe he’ll win the Champions League and settle everything down, but if he doesn’t it is without doubt a season in which Arsenal have gone backwards even if they finish second again.

11=) Arne Slot
Waltzed into the Premier League and instantly won the title by an absurd margin, and few in August were calling that a reasonable expectation for Arne Slot’s first season.

It’s, obviously, a spectacular achievement albeit one now just ever so slightly tainted by the absence of any other shiny baubles because human nature demands that we always want more. The FA Cup and Champions League exits were both enormously disappointing efforts, while in the Carabao Cup final Liverpool didn’t even manage any kind of effort at all.

Still, though. Should be pretty safe, you’d imagine.

11=) Andoni Iraola
What’s he up to here, then? Bournemouth had eight points from their first seven games, which isn’t exactly a crisis but wasn’t a brilliant start either. His side then took seven points from games against Arsenal, Villa and Man City before losing to Brentford and Brighton. And then won 4-2 at Wolves before entirely outplaying Tottenham. There have been clues since he arrived at something very special if Bournemouth could deliver consistent results, and an 11-match unbeaten run – which included a 3-0 jaunt at Old Trafford, a 4-1 slapping of Newcastle and 5-0 demolition job of high-flying Nottingham Forest – was starting to look very exciting indeed.

And then they went back to being cack again, taking four points from seven games with the sole win against Southampton and therefore barely even worth counting before a 1-0 win over a Fulham side one never knows what to expect from.

Iraola is clearly a coach of immense talent, but this tendency towards runs of extreme good form and extreme bad form won’t fly if he wants to step up to bigger clubs than Bournemouth.

11=) Oliver Glasner
After a shaky start Glasner’s side are now safely mid-table and about to become the first Palace side ever to reach 50 points in a Premier League season. He deserves huge credit and praise for it, instead he must settle for being linked with Spurs because the world is a miserable place where no good deed goes unpunished.

11=) Marco Silva
Fulham have spent the last couple of seasons in near invisibility in mid-table, which is very much a good thing. Rode out the loss of Aleksandar Mitrovic really well last term and once again they looked set for a year of bobbing about harmlessly enough in mid-table.

But it’s getting to a tricky point for Silva, in a way. He’s doing a perfectly adequate job, but almost if anything too adequate for me, Clive. He’s in danger of finding that unwanted zone where he’s invisible to bigger clubs who might be on the lookout for a new manager while by far the most likely way he does get noticed is if things start going very badly rather than very well. Beating Brighton 3-1 is far less noteworthy than losing 4-1 to Wolves, for example.

11=) Eddie Howe
More likely to get a statue than the sack now after ending Newcastle’s trophy drought. Very obviously not going anywhere at this time, but we still have a keen sense that there’s a whole raft of ‘How dare Newcastle do this to the man who gave the fans the most magical day ever’ when he gets sacked in November with Newcastle 12th.

11=) Thomas Frank
Sits quietly in the top 10 contenders for quite a lot of other jobs but the resolution to the United manager situation means Brentford fans can all rest a touch easier for a while. Until and unless it needs another resolution, of course, or Spurs get off their arses and do something about their daft manager. In a way, losing at home to Spurs – on the face of it a disastrous embarrassment at this time – might actually prove in a roundabout way to have been in Brentford’s best interests.

Brentford did flirt with serious trouble for uncomfortably long periods last season, but there was never any really serious chat about binning the manager who has done so very much for them, and this season has been far more secure.

11=) Nuno Espirito Santo
Says something when you’re manager of a club with a reputation for batsh*t antics of Forest’s level and there is not a manager in the land considered to be safer than you are. What a season Nuno and Forest are having. Even the 5-0 defeats are okay, because they are followed by 7-0 wins. The Champions League awaits despite a current stutter, although if they do blow it from here you can have this one for free: Bottlingham Forest.

11=) Unai Emery
Villa are the latest side to find that success can come at a price, and the struggle to adapt to a relentless Champions League-Premier League two-games-a-week schedule very real. It’s happened to Spurs. It happened to Newcastle. But Villa are beneficiaries of this being a particularly odd Premier League season and their league-based European hopes are far from forlorn.

11=) David Moyes
The springiest of new-manager-bounces. Moyes has transformed the mood and the results at Everton, and we’re genuinely not sure which of those two is the more impressive achievement. Safe in lower-mid-table with several other teams who really ought to know better, but with the luxury now of being able to relax for the rest of this season while saying goodbye to Goodison and looking forward to the future in their shiny new home.

That didn’t appear remotely possible when Moyes took over, and that was really very recently indeed.