Football is our national passion, but it is also a cut-throat business driven by results. Clubs value managers when they deliver those results but any under-performance receives harsh treatment. Sometimes, the Premier League seems like a revolving door for its managers.
Take Tottenham Manager, Jose Mourinho, for example. The Portuguese manager has held the reins at Chelsea (twice), then Manchester United, and since November last year he has been manager at Tottenham Hotspur. And that’s not including his other jobs in major European clubs. The longevity and continuity provided by Alex Ferguson at Manchester United and Arsene Wenger at Arsenal are truly anomalies in modern football and we expect that there will be a good number of managers leaving their Premier League clubs in the 2020/21 season.
Top of the list with the bookies is David Moyes, currently Manager of West Ham. The Hammers finished in lowly 16th place last season with only 39 points. Moyes was only appointed in December 2019, taking over from Manuel Pellegrini, but he has not yet managed to turn the team around. The current season has started badly with a 2-0 home defeat against Newcastle United and the club management will be looking carefully at the team performances in forthcoming weeks, eager to avoid another relegation battle. Paddy Power offers odds of 2/1 that David Moyes will be the next Premier League manager to leave.
Tottenham Hotspur finished last season in sixth position but the critics are already gunning for manager Jose Mourinho. If you had made a bet last week on Mourinho leaving his post, odds were as high as 33/1 but one defeat, 1-0 to Everton at home last week, has seen odds slashed to 8/1 . Mourinho called his players “lazy” and acknowledges the pre-season preparation has been poor for a number of reasons. Spurs fans will be hoping he turns the team round pronto.
Last season Crystal Palace finished in 14th place and, although there were shaky moments, the club’s tally of 49 points at the end of the season was their best result ever in the Premier League. Manager Roy Hodgson is the oldest manager in the league, at 73 years of age, but he signed a contract extension in March, taking him to the end of the 2020/21 season. The bookmakers believe Manager Rod Hodgson may, nonetheless, leave the club during and not after the season ends next year, with bookie William Hill offering odds of 9/1.
Fulham’s manager, Scott Parker, is also considered to be in the firing line, with bookmaker SkyBet offering odds of 10/1 that he will be sacked. Fulham returned to the Premier League this season after a 7-year absence but had an inauspicious start with a 3-0 defeat against Arsenal. The 39-year old former Chelsea player acknowledges the challenge ahead, saying to BT Sport “We know we’re going to lose football matches, but it’s how we react to defeat and move forward as a team that will be a bigger test for me and my team.
Four further managers are also considered likely candidates for a P45, being Slaven Bilic at West Brom, Dean Smith at Aston Villa, Steve Bruce at Newcastle and Graham Potter at Brighton & Hove Albion. But it is early days in this current season and you can expect the odds to continue to evolve in coming weeks.