Predicting managerial movement isn’t as easy as it looks.
On the one hand, of course, Manchester United did cut ties with Erik ten Hag! His teams produced a number of historically terrible statistical outputs for the most successful club of the Premier League era. Finishing eighth last season and 14th this season just wasn’t going to cut it.
On the other hand, Manchester United gave Ten Hag a contract extension four months ago! And then they spent the summer signing even more Dutch-and-or-former-Ajax players for him! For a team that finished eighth a year ago (with even worse underlying numbers), did the club really think that another rough start to the season wasn’t possible? Was an incredibly dubious VAR penalty in injury time against West Ham really the final straw?
The point is: pretty much every Premier League club is a dysfunctional organization. Objectives vary not only between teams, but between parts of the teams themselves. We can’t know what they’re thinking because there is no one individual brain doing all of the thinking.
But on the heels of Ten Hag’s departure, let’s see what we can glean from the outside. With Manchester United removed, here is a ranking of all 19 other Premier managers by who is at no risk of being fired and whose seat is the hottest.
Let’s get to the Hot Seat Index!
Cold: Not unless they want to go
19. Pep Guardiola, Manchester City
His contract is up at the end of the 2024-25 season. I’m not creative enough to envision a world where City fires him before then. I am also not creative enough to envision a world where City don’t do everything in their power to convince him to sign an extension.
At the end of the day, he’s leaving the club on his own terms, whenever that may be.
18. Mikel Arteta, Arsenal
He’s the third-longest tenured manager in the league, and is signed up through 2027. The Arsenal team was built very clearly to align with his vision, which was so clearly shaped by years of playing for legendary managers David Moyes and Arsene Wenger: big dudes who never lose the ball. And despite a slow start to this season, that team is fantastic.
Plus, Arsenal very easily could’ve fired him after he oversaw two straight eighth-place finishes in his first two seasons at the club. At the time, the only evidence we had for him was: guy who isn’t making his team better. Yet the club held on, and we’ve since seen him nearly win the league, two seasons in a row. He’s not going anywhere — unless he decides to leave.
17. Thomas Frank, Brentford
Sure, they never finish near the top of the table, but Brentford wildly exceed their wage bill every year. Only Guardiola has been in the job for longer, and this a tricky job to hire for. You need someone who is willing to constantly adapt to the team’s changing personnel and someone who is going to implement the club’s various data-driven strategies. You know, someone who’s willing to turn the first 90 seconds of the match into a game of American football — ahem.
Frank might not be the Brentford manager for much longer, but that will only be because some richer club finally decided to give him a shot.
Still cool: Staying until something suddenly changes
16. Arne Slot, Liverpool
Thirteen wins from his first 16 games, with 33 goals for and just 10 against? Pretty darn good.
The schedule hasn’t been too bad, but Liverpool now have a home win against Chelsea, away wins at AC Milan and RB Leipzig, and a road draw against Arsenal. Per ESPN BET, Slot’s team are just slightly second-favorites for the Premier League (behind Man City) and fourth-favorites for the Champions League. Keep it up for a full season or two, and he’s going to slide into that top tier.
15. Unai Emery, Aston Villa
Tied for fourth in the Premier League? Literally first in the Champions League? And this guy isn’t in the top tier?
Perhaps Emery, who is under contract through 2029, should be higher. The only reason he isn’t is that there feels like a bigger potential downside to Villa than these other teams. By a blend of 70% expected goals and 30% goals (which we’ll call “adjusted goal rating”), they only rate out as the seventh-best team in the league through 10 games. And they still haven’t played Chelsea, Manchester City, Liverpool, or even Nottingham Forest:
In the Champions League, they’ve scored six goals and conceded none despite only generating 3.7 xG (expected goals) and allowing 3.0 to their opponents. In other words, Villa are probably headed for a decline in results over the next couple months.
Emery isn’t going anywhere any time soon, but it also seems unlikely — to me, at least — that they’re able to reproduce last season’s success.
14. Andoni Iraola, AFC Bournemouth
Bournemouth shocked everyone by firing Gary O’Neil after he came in mid-season and guided the club out of what looked like surefire relegation in 2022-23. Well, they did it because Bournemouth had terrible underlying numbers and were likely to be right back in the relegation battle again if something didn’t change.
Under Iraola, the Cherries ranked 12th by our adjusted-goal rating last season. And then despite losing star, play-every-minute striker Dominic Solanke to Spurs over the summer, they’ve moved up to ninth this year. After taking down both Arsenal and Man City over the past three weeks, Iraola falls into the same category as most of the other managers before him on these rankings: he’s more likely to leave the club because he wants to, rather than because the club decided it was time for him to go.
Still kinda cool: They wouldn’t … right?
13. Kieran McKenna, Ipswich Town
McKenna was a truly transformative coach for Ipswich at the lower levels. Two years ago, they were playing in England’s third tier. And after getting them promoted to the Premier League, the 38-year-old was linked with a number of big jobs before signing a four-year extension with the club through 2028.
Now, they’ve been terrible in the top flight: five draws and five losses through 10 games, backed up with some even-worse underlying numbers. But he’s probably the only coach in the league — other than, uh, Guardiola? — who is immune from getting fired because his team got relegated, so we’re throwing him in his own tier. (Really, he was the best guy to get them into the Premier League, which would make him the best guy to get them back there if necessary.)
A little less cool: They shouldn’t … right?
12. Nuno Espirito-Santo, Nottingham Forest
11. Ange Postecoglou, Tottenham Hotspur
10. Enzo Maresca, Chelsea
9. Marco Silva, Fulham
I’m grouping these four because I view them all as occupying similar situations: impressive performances for trigger-happy clubs.
Forest are currently in third(!) place and have genuinely played like a top-six team so far this season. Meanwhile, Fulham have genuinely played like a top-10 team through the first nine matches. Forest were in a relegation battle last season; Fulham lost midfielder Joao Palhinha (Bayern Munich) over the summer and then didn’t really replace him. Both Nuno and Silva have done fantastic work so far this season, but teams in this part of the table are much more prone to fluctuations in performances. A couple bad months could push both managers toward the hot seat.
Tottenham have really been quite good this season on the aggregate, but their extreme style has led to some extreme results. They’re by far the most aggressive team in the league off the ball, and they’ve generated more shots and touches in the penalty area than any team in the league other than City.
The problem so far — why Spurs are still only seventh in the table despite great underlying numbers — is their inconsistency. They either blow teams out of the water or get played even by the likes of Leicester City and Crystal Palace. On the whole, it looks great. But game to game, it’s much less convincing. If that continues, I could see the fans — and the club — start to get frustrated.
And then with Chelsea, well, it’s Chelsea. They were probably the fourth-best team in the league last season, and then they got rid of the coach. They’re probably the fourth-best team in the league this season, and well, who’s to say that will be enough?
Lukewarm: The “I don’t know, man” man
8. Fabian Hurzeler, Brighton & Hove Albion
On the one hand, Brighton are currently just two points off the top four. On the other hand, if there’s one club that doesn’t care about short term results, it’s Brighton, and this team currently has the 13th-best expected-goal differential in the league.
I don’t think you hire a 31-year-old manager unless you’re planning on being patient with him, but as measured by the metrics that Brighton’s leadership cares about, this is their worst team since 2019-20. For a club that finally made a ton of big bets in the transfer market this summer, I wonder how long they’ll be OK with these mediocre performances.
Getting hot: The only reason these seats aren’t the hottest is because a couple other guys have done even worse
7. Eddie Howe, Newcastle United
I expected a bounceback year on Tyneside. Newcastle were fantastic two seasons ago, and then really seemed to fall apart last year under the weight of the extra Champions League matches. Despite that, their plus-23 goal differential was easily the fourth-best mark in the league. Without those extra European matches and with the likelihood that their point total would better align with their performances, it seemed an easy bet that the club with the richest owners in professional sports might do better this season.
Instead, they’ve been even worse? They’ve allowed as many goals as they’ve conceded this season, and their adjusted goal rating is pretty much exactly league-average. Plus, Eddie Howe and sporting director Paul Mitchell have been indirectly criticizing each other through the media. even with the win over Arsenal this past weekend, it’s really starting to feel like Howe won’t be long for the job.
6. Sean Dyche, Everton
Last year, I thought Everton were a genuinely average-ish team that fooled everyone into thinking they were bad partially because of some finishing variance but mostly because the league docked them six points. This season, they’ve genuinely been bad, but they’re five clear of the relegation zone, and there are at least four teams I’d say are definitely worse than them.
Overall, Dyche has still done a great job for a club that hasn’t really had much of an ability to spend and improve the roster while he’s been manager. With new owners likely on the way and potentially some reinforcements arriving in January, it wouldn’t surprise me to see Everton rise up the table. But “we’re the 17th-best team in the league and we could improve!” still isn’t a great argument for job security.
5. Julen Lopetegui, West Ham United
They spent a ton of money over the summer … and they stink. At the same time, there are many worse teams in the league, and West Ham really did seem to recruit the exact players that Lopetegui wanted, so perhaps he’ll get some more leeway than the average manager.
The longer-term future is not looking great either. Despite all the new players they brought in, West Ham are the second-oldest team in the league this year.
4. Oliver Glasner, Crystal Palace
I wonder if he’ll be a victim of his own expectations. Here’s how the table looked after he was hired by Palace last February:
And here’s how it looks this season:
The uptick last year created expectations that Palace might challenge for Europe … and now they’re in a relegation battle.
But if we look at all Premier League games since Glasner was hired, Palace have a plus-10 goal difference and their adjusted goal rating is seventh-best behind the top three, Chelsea, Tottenham, and Newcastle. I’d be inclined to look at the whole sample instead of just this season — even though personnel changed over the summer.
But when a team that didn’t expect to be in the relegation race enters the relegation race, it’s rare that their manager lasts long.
3. Steve Cooper, Leicester City
They have the third-worst xG differential in the league after Ipswich and Southampton. The five-point gap from them to 18th should buy Cooper some breathing room, but there’s pretty much nothing here that makes me think Leicester are safe. They could easily win the fewest points of any team over the final 31 matches, and I don’t think anyone would be surprised. ESPN BET still puts them at greater-than-50-% to be relegated.
On fire: A matter of when, not if
2. Russell Martin, Southampton
Welcome to this season’s version of last season’s Burnley.
Southampton are trying to play like Manchester City. Only City have played a lower percentage of their passes forward: 28.2% for Southampton, 23.5% for City. And only City are moving the ball more slowly up the field: 1.02 meters per second for Southampton, 0.94 m/s for City.
The big difference, of course, is that Manchester City are in second place, while Southampton are second from bottom.
Despite controlling 54.9% of the possession in their matches — fifth-most in the league — Martin’s team have attempted the second-fewest shots and allowed the second most. They’re generating nothing from all that possession and then rolling out a red carpet every time they lose the ball. It’s simply not working, at all.
With all of the low cost bets they’ve made on young players from across the world, Southampton are clearly operating on a timeline beyond just this season. There are smart people at this club, so I don’t think they’re just letting Martin do his thing so he hopefully gets hired by Bayern Munich next summer after Southampton get relegated. There has to be some kind of desire throughout the club to play a more expansive, dominant possession-style.
Perhaps this is all part of some grand plan where the team gets relegated while sticking to its guns, then dominates the Championship next season with their talent and parachute-payment advantage, and then comes back stronger in two years, ready to do it all again. If not, it’s hard to see Martin lasting for much longer. He’s not going to change, and that means that Southampton are going to continue to lose.
1. Gary O’Neil, Wolverhampton Wanderers
O’Neil was put in a really tough situation.
In the micro sense: Lopetegui walked away from the Wolves job right before last season started, so O’Neil had to manage the entire season without getting a preseason with his players. And in the macro sense: It’s never really clear what Wolves are trying to achieve in a given season. Are they just a weigh-station for players represented by a certain super-agent, or are they actually trying to win soccer games? And even if it’s the former, they’re no longer scooping up Jorge Mendes’s star prospects like Rúben Neves and Diogo Jota.
That said, this team has been awful. They only have three points, one of which came from a freakish situation where 2-1 leaders Brighton somehow turned a 4-on-1 counter in injury time … into a 2-2 draw:
The only positive for O’Neil, at this point, is that the schedule has been rough. Wolves have played six of the top seven teams in adjusted goal rating. With his team in last place and a home game against 19th-place Southampton coming up, O’Neil’s job — and maybe Wolverhampton’s season — is likely on the line.
