It was Julen Lopetegui who was feeling the Premier League sack race heat but Ange Postecoglou has now seen his Spurs side lose four of their last six Premier League games.
Here are the latest Sack Race odds according to Oddschecker…
1) Ange Postecoglou
Just an endlessly fascinating manager of a wild football team. There is a growing sense that while it’s all quite fun (for neutrals at least) he really is just building – at, it should be noted, huge expense – the most ‘Lads, it’s Tottenham’ Tottenham team yet.
That sensational dismantling of Man City was Spurs’ 10th win in 14 games across three competitions after being outwitted by Arsenal in the NLD, and yet the defeats were all unbelievably stupid: from 2-0 up at Brighton, at a Palace team that hadn’t won a league game in their first eight attempts, a Europa schooling at Galatasaray that somehow ended only 3-2, and at home against an Ipswich team looking for a first win in their 11th attempt.
And since that magnificent win at City, Spurs have been, frankly, sh*t. They’ve snatched a draw from the jaws of victory against Roma, drew a game they should have lost at home to Fulham and then produced an abject display in defeat to Bournemouth which got the away fans’ backs up and Ange’s back up at the fans’ backs being up. And then done another real big stupid v Chelsea, attempted a feat of staggering self-sabotage against United in the Carabao which Ange thought was all a great laugh and then succeeded in a mission previously thought impossible: suffering a 6-3 defeat in which that scoreline could be reasonably preceded by the word ‘only’ and lost meekly at Nottingham Forest. And in amongst all that they also managed to go 5-0 up before half-time against Southampton. They’ve now also drawn at home against Wolves in a game they trailed in the early stages and led in the closing stages.
The pattern is clear: when they are good, Postecoglou’s Spurs blow teams away. Even your Villas and Man Citys. Even Southampton. But when they are bad they generally get nothing much, against anyone. And they are bad just far, far too often and have been for far, far too long.
Really does feel like if Spurs are happy to go back to the good old pre-Big Six days of being a sometimes (and it really is only sometimes) entertaining but ultimately irrelevant team who’ll have some good days and some terrible days while finishing mid-table and maybe having a bit of a run at a cup every so often, then Big Ange is absolutely fine. But increasingly hard to see how playing what at times amounts to wilfully stupid football stupidly ever amounts to more than that.
READ: Spurs are exciting?! Make that ‘exhausting’ if you are a fan under Postecoglou
2) Julen Lopetegui
Stormed out of Wolves days before the season began a year ago and West Ham is a club that could test the patience of a saint. Really does have some of the very best attacking players outside the Big Six to work with, which hopefully reduces the potential for huffing off at the first sign of trouble.
The fact a sacking or huffing are equally acceptable in this market does make this feel like it could be a goer, given Lopetegui’s reputation. However, when apparently handed (ludicrously) two games to save himself he promptly won the first of them at Newcastle and then lost the second heavily to Arsenal. If that left the Hammers hierarchy on the fence, you’d have to imagine a 3-1 defeat at Leicester would get them back off it, but he lived to fight another day and got a very necessary three points against Wolves that has at the very least (and quite probably the most) delayed the inevitable.
A four-game unbeaten run took them up the Premier League table into that mid-table morass, but a 5-0 humbling from a coasting Liverpool was not the way Lopetegui would have chosen to round out 2024.
3) Sean Dyche
We can’t be having this, the anti-Ange is in his absolute element after back-to-back-to-back draws against Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester City. Sure, that hammering at Manchester United looked a terrible start to a horrible run of upcoming games and meant Everton were without a win in five and sinking fast. But then they went and battered Wolves 4-0. Throw in the postponement of the Merseyside Derby to go with those stiflings and suddenly this nightmare run looks distinctly less nightmarish.
Did lose quite badly at home to Nottingham Forest, but lots of teams do that now.
4) Pep Guardiola
Can’t recall Guardiola ever being this prominent in the Sack Race, but these are unprecedented times. City lost five games in a row – two of them to the inexplicable City-scuppering Kryptonite of Tottenham – and Guardiola signing a new contract has failed to provide the intended security and clarity. They even managed to end that losing run in surely the worst way any team has ever ended a losing run ever, by drawing 3-3 at home in a game they led 3-0 with 15 minutes remaining.
And after another humbling defeat at Anfield to the runaway leaders Liverpool, City found themselves 11 points off the pace with rival supporters merrily singing about Guardiola getting sacked in the morning. Beating Nottingham Forest in the next game took the pressure off somewhat, and then a draw v Palace was not even surprising anymore. Another Champions League defeat followed at Juventus, and the less said about a genuinely abysmal Manchester Derby and its genuinely abysmal conclusion for Pep and City the better while defeat at Villa was striking only for its mundanity.
Even when Pep and City did finally get a second win in their last 14 games – at Leicester, who are rubbish – it was cartoonishly unconvincing.
5) 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
Really is sub-optimal for a manager to find himself this prominent this quickly, though.
6) Ivan Juric
Lasted less than two months at Roma and absolutely nothing can be ruled out at Southampton.
7) 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.
Ipswich may only have two wins but there’s been nothing about them to suggest they’re going to spend the season being horribly outclassed every week either. Probably helps them that others down at the bottom of the table are finding wins equally hard to come by and with less by way of mitigation, but six draws tell a story of a team and manager who have swiftly found a way to compete at this level. There will still be bad days, and Newcastle was a bad day, but it’s still hard to imagine a world in which Ipswich bin McKenna and improve.
8=) Eddie Howe
Could absolutely go tits skyward at any moment and there are clearly key figures at Newcastle not quite seeing eye to eye, and it would be fair to say Newcastle’s performances in their first four games weren’t really performances you’d expect to yield a hugely impressive 10 points. That run of fortune came to an end at Fulham in quite emphatic style but the performance against Man City was their best of the season. Should really have beaten Everton and probably Brighton but a team that appeared to be reverting to the mean – and not in a good way – then turned Arsenal over good and proper.
Howe had looked a likely contender for next manager in crisis, and defeat against West Ham followed by a draw against Palace helped after those back-to-back wins against Arsenal and Forest had rather silenced it all. But then they drew with Liverpool in a game they probably should have won to challenge Spurs in the Spursiness, before being the latest team to succumb to whatever spell has been cast on the Gtech this season.
Slapped Leicester, Ipswich and Aston Villa silly to silence any immediate chatter.
8=) Oliver Glasner
It’s not been pretty but they’ve dragged themselves out of immediate peril in the Premier League table with hope that they might climb further. Allowing Arsenal to score multiple open-play goals is a concern, mind, but they are now on 20 points from 19 games and bang on course now for another classic 40-something Palace season.
8=) Vitor Pereira
Only been in the job five minutes. Is doing quite well. Surely shouldn’t be this high up the list already.
11) Fabian Hurzeler
Another intriguing new face in Our League, tasked with getting Brighton back to where they were a year ago before things just took a turn for the dreary in Roberto De Zerbi’s first and final full season in charge.
They almost completely forgot how to win games in the second half of the season, which isn’t ideal, but the new manager made a quite literally perfect start in ironing out that particular wrinkle and a point at the Emirates is almost never a bad way to drop your first points of the season. Subsequent draws with Ipswich and Forest slightly more niggling, but no real drama. And getting battered by Chelsea is not as humiliating as we thought it would have been two months ago.
Hurzeler has now also made a vital step that all managers who hope to make their way in the Barclays must: inflict hilarious embarrassment on Tottenham. Beating Man City from behind will go down quite well too. Defeat to Fulham and Palace less so. Are they just having their standard season once again?
12) Ruben Amorim
You have to at least admit it would be funny. 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. The first real dissent is incoming.
13=) 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.
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 it would need to be going really, really badly for that to change this time around, you’d think. Have started this season perfectly well, albeit with an almost comical disparity between home results (excellent) and away results (pish).
13=) 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.
15=) 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. It’s an extreme example, but does all tie in with the overriding feeling from last season that Iraola isn’t far away from doing something quite special if he can it all to come together at Bournemouth over a sustained period of time.
15=) Nuno Espirito Santo
Forest are quite mad so rule nothing out, but they could plausibly now fail to win another game all season yet still survive with something to spare. They are third in the league and deserve to be third in the league. It would be quite something for Nuno to be next manager out from this position, wouldn’t it? At any other club outside the gilded elite it would be inconceivable.
15=) Unai Emery
It is starting to look like 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. And it does appear to now be happening to Villa, who will be very relieved indeed to have played Brentford and Southampton at home to end a rotten run.
15=) Mikel Arteta
Appears to have emerged out of the other side of an uncomfortably choppy period and will probably be relieved that it’s ‘only’ Liverpool who have disappeared off into the distance rather than Manchester City again.
Work to do to get back in the title race now, but every indication in recent weeks that they are capable of doing so if – but it’s a big and steadily growing if week by week – Liverpool show some meaningful signs of weakness.
15=) Enzo Maresca
Results are awkwardly not really matching the narrative around Chelsea, who avoided complete catastrophe against City on the opening day and look 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 have 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.
They currently appear more plausible title contenders than either Manchester City or Arsenal, and it’s fair to say few were predicting that back in August.
20) Arne Slot
Liverpool’s home defeat to Forest stands as comfortably the most jarringly unexpected of the season to date, bringing to a shuddering halt a perfect start that had got a lot of people quite understandably quite excited. The Reds have bounced back well, beating Bournemouth and Wolves and most significantly Chelsea in their first major test of the season before taking a 2-2 draw from an entertaining trip to the Emirates. A come-from-behind win over Brighton on a weekend when Arsenal, City and Villa all lost while Chelsea also dropped points is, you would have to say, handy.
Weren’t great in a dicey 3-2 win at Southampton, but then eased to wins over Real Madrid and Man City like it was nothing. There was a draw at Newcastle and another against Fulham, but there have been goal-laden wins aplenty since and their lead atop the Premier League table shows little sign of shrinking.
