Should football clubs sack their manager after promotion?
There’s been a lot of admiration recently for the performances of the newly promoted Premier League teams this season. With roughly a quarter of the campaign played, Brighton and Huddersfield are nestled comfortably in the top half of the table, with Newcastle just below them in 11th. Managers Chris Hughton, Rafa Benítez, and David Wagner have rightfully been claiming the plaudits but much of the wider debate has been about how the success of these sides reflects on the quality of the Premier League outside of the Top Six.
Part of the reason for this becoming a topic of discussion is that it represents a deviation from the norm; usually by this point in the season, one or more of the promoted clubs starts to struggle and begins to look destined for a relegation battle come the end of April. A large chunk of those clubs will sack their manager at some point during that cycle in a bid to stay up. Or, at least, that’s how it usually seems to play out.
Which got me to thinking: if a high number of clubs end up sacking their manager shortly after getting promoted anyway, is there a more optimal time to do it?
My general line of reasoning was that when promoted clubs change their manager it’s usually because they’re in trouble. That generally makes the job unattractive to high quality candidates and means that most clubs resort to picking from a pool of relegation firefighters who come in to steady the ship, but may not offer much more than that. If this manager prevents them from going down, the club often falls into the same pattern of keeping faith with them because they did a good job which can hinder their progress towards becoming an established top flight team.
Add in the fact that a lot of the time promoted clubs tend to sack their manager in between transfer windows, meaning the newly appointed boss has to try to cobble something together from a squad assembled by somebody else. The inability to sign players means they have little influence over the shape of the squad and taking over mid-season, instead of having a full pre-season to implement their ideas and tactical approach in training, can make it difficult for a proper change in strategy to take hold.
The obvious objection to this is that it would be incredibly harsh on the manager who got the club to the Premier League in the first place — you would essentially be sacking someone for doing their job exceptionally well.
To which I would argue: getting promoted from the Championship and avoiding relegation from the Premier League are essentially two different jobs that require two different skillsets. Being good at one aspect of management doesn’t always translate into being good at another; the chef at your local pub might make an incredible Sunday roast but that doesn’t mean that they could work in a Michelin Star kitchen.
I decided to see if there was anything that would support this hunch so I had a look at how the 30 promoted managers have fared over the last 10 seasons (2007/2008–2016/2017) and see whether there were any conclusions to be drawn. Choosing look at the last decade was pretty arbitrary — it was mostly so it gave a nice round number — but football has changed a significant amount over the course of time and I don’t know how relevant the record of clubs promoted in the early 90s is to the present day. There are a few managers who appear on the list multiple times due to being promoted and relegated multiple times/ with multiple clubs. I’ve decided to treat each of these as a distinct entity both for the purpose of ease and also based on the assumption that, where they’ve stayed at the same club throughout a relegation and subsequent promotion, their squad would have changed enough in the process for it represent a different attempt.
Below is a list of managers, the clubs they were promoted with, and their first Premier League season following promotion (in brackets), categorised by their fate:
Sacked first season:
1. Billy Davies/ Derby County (07/08)
2. Chris Hughton/ Newcastle United (10/11)
3. Roberto Di Matteo/ West Bromwich Albion (10/11)
4. Neil Warnock/ Queens Park Rangers (11/12)
5. Brian McDermott/ Reading (12/13)
6. Nigel Adkins/ Southampton (12/13)
7. Malky Mackay/ Cardiff City (13/14)
8. Ian Holloway/ Crystal Palace (13/14)
9. Harry Redknapp/ Queens Park Rangers (13/14)
10. Slavisa Jokanovic/ Watford (15/16)(resigned before season)
11. Aitor Karanka/ Middlesbrough (16/17)
12. Steve Bruce/ Hull City (16/17) (resigned before season)
Over a third of managers were sacked at some point during their first season following promotion. Malky Mackay was sacked due to personal issues with owner Vincent Tan, but Cardiff were a point outside the relegation zone when he departed, so it seems plausible that on-field performance contributed to that decision.
It’s perhaps a little unfair to include both Jokanovic and Bruce in this section, as neither were technically sacked and both left before the season actually started, but they do provide some insight into the viability of my thinking.
Bruce resigned from Hull as a result of a long-running dispute with the owners, specifically in regard to their lack of financial backing in the transfer market. Hull recruited from within by promoting assistant Mike Phelan to head coach. After a bright start, Phelan struggled and was sacked in December and his successor, Marco Silva, almost managed to right the ship but couldn’t quite keep them afloat in the end.
Jokanovic left because Watford didn’t want to renew his contract. After promotion, Jokanovic rightly felt as though he’d earned a pay rise but he and the club couldn’t agree terms. Watford then spent that money on attracting a higher profile candidate — Quique Sánchez Flores, who had previously won the Europa League with Atlético Madrid. It worked out well, as the Hornets finished a comfortable 13th in the Premier League and progressed to the semi-final of the FA Cup under the Spaniard.
Not sacked but relegated first season:
13. Tony Mowbray/ West Bromwich Albion (09/10)
14. Ian Holloway/ Blackpool (10/11)
15. Sean Dyche/ Burnley (14/15)
16. Alex Neil/ Norwich City (15/16)
An additional four managers scraped through their first season following promotion with their jobs in tact but without their Premier League status. It is, of course, unfair to hold them solely accountable, but if you combine these four with the twelve who were sacked, it leaves you with more than 50% (16/30) who ‘failed’ in their first season after promotion.
Moved to another club during/ after first season:
17. Steve Bruce (07/08) (Birmingham City > Wigan)
18. Owen Coyle (09/10)(Burnley > Bolton)
19. Paul Lambert (11/12)(Norwich City > Villa)
20. Brendan Rodgers (11/12) (Swansea City > Liverpool)
There were a further four managers who left their own volition at some point in their first season following promotion. Having guided their teams to safety, Brendan Rodgers and Paul Lambert both resigned from their job at the end of the season to take roles at ‘bigger’ clubs. Owen Coyle and Steve Bruce, meanwhile, were plucked from their clubs by their rivals shortly after their promotion to the top flight. That the clubs they left behind (Burnley and Birmingham City respectively) both went straight back down after they’d moved suggests that Bruce and Coyle had significant influence over their team’s fortunes. Either that or they realised they were doomed and made the move while their stock was high and their reputation was still in tact.
Avoided relegation/sacking first season but sacked in the second:
21. Roy Keane/ Sunderland (07/08)(resigned)
22. Phil Brown/ Hull City (08/09)
23. Nigel Pearson/ Leicester City (14/15)
The sixteen managers who were either sacked or relegated by the end of their first Premier League season after promotion, coupled with the four who moved onto other clubs, means that, over the last decade, just ten managers out of thirty have been in charge of a club they were promoted with for the start of a second season in the top division. Of those ten managers, another three of them left at some point during that second season.
Nigel Pearson is a somewhat contentious inclusion in this portion of the list. Pearson had narrowly avoided relegation with Leicester City in the 14/15 season but was sacked due to the conduct of his son and several other youth team players on that ill-fated pre-season tour of Thailand, rather than explicitly for footballing reasons. His replacement, Claudio Ranieri, was in place for the first game of the season and the rest is history.
Avoided being sacked in first and second season but relegated in season two:
24. Alex McLeish/ Birmingham City (09/10)
25. Steve Bruce/ Hull City (13/14)
McLeish and Bruce both did admirable jobs in navigating their first season in the Premier League after promotion, emerging with both their jobs and their top flight status in tact. In the second season, they were only able to repeat half of that feat. Both of their clubs kept faith in them for the entirety of the second season, but sadly Birmingham City and Hull City both succumbed to relegation despite the best efforts of their managers.
Survived two seasons without being sacked or relegated:
26. Tony Pulis/ Stoke City (08/09)
27. Mick McCarthy/ Wolverhampton Wanderers (09/10)(sacked in third season)
28. Sam Allardyce/ West Ham United (12/13)
29. Eddie Howe/ Bournemouth (15/16)
30. Sean Dyche/ Burnley (15/16)*
* Sean Dyche has currently completed one season in the Premier League without being sacked or relegated. If he gets to the end of this season still in his job and with Burnley still in the Premier League — which currently looks likely — he’ll join this list.
That leaves just five managers, one in six over the last decade, who have managed to retain their job and Premier League status for two complete seasons — provided that Dyche manages the feat in 17/18.
Tony Pulis eventually left Stoke by mutual consent in 2013 after a series of midtable finishes and a period of stagnation. Mick McCarthy was sacked by Wolves during their third season in the Premier League and his long-time assistant, Terry Connor, oversaw the club’s relegation back to the Championship at the end of that season. Allardyce left West Ham at the end of his four-year contract at the end of the 14/15 season, while Eddie Howe and Sean Dyche are still at their clubs as of the time of writing but both have frequently been linked with taking over at other clubs.
If you include the four newly promoted managers who were poached by other Premier League clubs, that leaves just nine out of thirty who could be regarded as a ‘success’, the equivalent of less than one in three.
If we take just the first season into account, slightly more than 50% (16/30) of promotion-winning managers failed to adjust to a higher standard of football either by being sacked or relegated. That number substantially increases if a second season in the top division is taken into account. This suggests that, historically, the chance of a promoted manager proving a success in the Premier League in the immediate short term is a 50/50 shot at best. Hardly the sort of odds you want if you’re a chairman — would you want to invest millions in a player if there’s half a chance that the manager who wanted him isn’t going to be there in 6 months time?
Of course, there are all sorts of caveats that come with this. The circumstances each of these managers and clubs found themselves in are unique and that makes it difficult to draw concrete conclusions from. Nor is this to say that managers who are successful in the second tier can’t translate that success into the Premier League or are in someway inherently limited or incapable of improvement. This simply suggests that, in the very, very, short term, there’s perhaps some justification for being sceptical about a manager’s ability to handle that jump in standard.
There are plenty of factors to take into account when assessing whether a manager can make that jump with your club or not: what is the financial situation of our club? How much compensation would we have to pay our existing manager? Is our manager’s style of football likely to translate to the Premier League? If not, is he capable of adapting his style to adjust to the new league? Are our current players capable of playing a different style of football? If not, how extensively can we overhaul the squad? Is our geographical location attractive enough to attract a different type of player? Is our geographical location attractive enough to attract a different type of manager?
These are just a drop in the ocean. Changing managers is always wrought with difficulty and to do it immediately after promotion would certainly add new layers of difficulty.
Loyalty towards someone who has helped your club into the promised land is admirable but, as Coyle, Bruce, Lambert, and Rodgers go to show, that loyalty doesn’t always cut both ways. If, as a club, you no longer fulfil their requirements, there’s every chance your manager will move to greener pastures. Newly promoted clubs could do a lot worse than spending time seriously contemplating whether a manager who oversaw promotion to Premier League really has the right skillset to avoid relegation. Those who make the bold decision to make that change before the new season starts could well prevent themselves angst further down the line.
