Hello again, apologies for the delay in posting, I just moved and have finally gotten settled and internet set up! Just in time too, because I couldn’t wait any longer to talk about today’s topic: has this been the strangest year in recent memory for managerial changes in England?

Vincent Kompany

The most unpredictable of the bunch, and the main reason why I felt there was enough evidence to look at this as a larger-scale trend, is the links between Bayern Munich and Vincent Kompany. Now this is very much in part due to the state of Bayern Munich, which is chaotic to put it nicely. Bayern memorably sacked Julian Nagelsmann last year because they wanted to bring in Thomas Tuchel, while Nagelsmann had been doing quite well at Bayern. In the end, Bayern decided to move on from Tuchel faster than they had from Nagelsmann! The German’s departure from the Allianz at the end of the 2023/24 season was announced with months still to play in the year, and the Bayern hierarchy has been trying to attract his successor since. In a strange deviation from what we are used to, Bayern have experienced nothing but rejection from every manager they’ve approached so far. Some managers that have rejected Bayern have been Xabi Alonso – who opted to remain at Leverkusen after their title-winning campaign, Julian Nagelsmann – who was not jumping at the chance to come back to Bayern, Ralf Ragnick – who preferred to remain as the Austrian national team manager, and Oliver Glasner – who was undesired by Bayern for years as he coached Eintracht Frankfurt, but was approached mere months after joining Crystal Palace. This wild goose chase of a search for a manager has finally led the Bavarians to approaching Vincent Kompany after he saw his Burnley side get relegated from the Premier League in their first season back up. Results aside, Kompany also made some serious mistakes, potentially assuming Burnley’s safety from relegation was assured. Kompany continued to play a possession, attacking style of football that worked well when he had one of the best squads in his league (in the Championship) but was heavily exposed at Premier League level. The choice of player transfers was very much for the future, with several young, unproven players coming in ahead of this past season. Some key deficiencies in the squad (like at LB for one) were not addressed, and Kompany stubbornly refused to change his tactics, resulting in relegation. We can argue that Kompany’s style would have more success with a squad like Bayern’s, who are indeed one of the best in their league, but the more concerning part for Bayern fans should be Kompany’s unwillingness to alter his approach when it was clearly not working well enough. This also goes to show that while football has evolved past the thought that a former great player will be guaranteed to be a great manager, but Kompany’s playing career and the reputation he gained from it is absolutely a factor in Bayern approaching him.

Steve Cooper

Onto other strange managerial changes: the first one this year was Steve Cooper’s dismissal from Nottingham Forest. Yes Nottingham Forest were 17th at the time, but the sales of key players (Brennan Johnson for one) and their injury situation played a big part in this. Over his Forest tenure, Cooper averaged 1.43 points per match, a very respectable number. His replacement? Nuno Esperito Santos, coming off a stint managing Saudi Pro League side Al-Ittihad. Nuno’s best work came at Wolves, where he did objectively great work at the Midlands side, averaging 1.68 points per match across 199 matches in the Championship and Premier League. His short time at Spurs was not inspiring, and after his appointment at Forest, he averaged 1.15 points per match, and Forest barely survived relegation, ending the season in the exact same place they were in when Steve Cooper apparently deserved to be sacked. Whether this really has more to do with the Forest management is unknown, but the change was not a noticeable improvement!

Mauricio Pochettino

I think most football fans were surprised to see Chelsea parting ways with Mauricio Pochettino at the end of the Premier League season. Yes, the side struggled early on in the season, but it cannot be argued how much they improved in the second half of the season, winning the 4th most points in the league in 2024, behind only the clear cut top-3 of Man City, Arsenal, and Liverpool. The squad of young players had finally shown some chemistry and will to fight for results, and Pochettino had clearly won over the dressing room. At the end of the season, Chelsea finished in 6th place (compared to 12th last year), and only missed out on Europa League qualification due to Manchester United winning the FA Cup final from 8th place in the league. The Chelsea players were noticeably unhappy about Pochettino’s departure, with many first team players expressing sadness on social media about the change. If there were a handful of elite managers available for hire at the end of this year, I would’ve been able to understand letting Pochettino go, but there isn’t a wealth of options. The 4 main candidates were Roberto de Zerbi (we’ll get to him later), Kieran McKenna from Ipswich, Brentford’s Thomas Frank, and Leicester City’s Enzo Maresca. Recent reports by the Athletic indicate that Chelsea have chosen Enzo Maresca as their preferred replacement for Pochettino, leaving Chelsea and neutral fans alike not knowing what to expect. The criticisms of Enzo at Leicester this season, with the most expensive squad the Championship has ever seen, were valid; his side were 11 points clear in the automatic promotion spots on January 1st with only 3 losses in 25 matches. Since then, Leicester lost 8 of their final 21 games, finishing with the 5th highest points total of 2024 but hanging on to the Championship title and automatic promotion in the end (helped by some poor form at the end of the year from promotion rivals Leeds and Ipswich). Often showing a possession game that consisted of a horseshoe of passing around the opponent’s box without any penetrative passes to speak of, Leicester fans have been left frustrated on more than a handful of occasions by Enzo’s approach. Chelsea suffered from the same problems this year – often lacking the penetrative passes into the box to produce goals and passing around in the opponent’s half without much threat. As it stands, it does not seem likely that Enzo will solve those problems for Chelsea unless he changes his approach. In the end, Chelsea targeting Championship managers feels a long way off from their recent history. If there is any Championship manager I think has the most potential, it is Ipswich’s Kieran Mckenna, who was informed recently he was no longer being considered for the Chelsea job.

Roberto de Zerbi

I said we’d get to Roberto de Zerbi later, and now we will. The Brighton manager who took England by storm after replacing Graham Potter and improving on what was already seen as a fine job done by Potter with Brighton, achieving Europa League qualification last season. Brighton’s results this year were not nearly as successful, but losing Moises Caicedo and Alexis Mac Allister without finding suitable replacements for them was always going to cause issues. Add in long term injuries to key players such as Kaoru Mitoma, and it makes sense why Brighton finished 11th this year with the added European schedule. With de Zerbi being linked to several jobs over the past year due to his impressive performances with Brighton, it seems likely that his departure “by mutual consent” was a decision by the club to let him go before he left them for another job. Now Brighton have the whole summer to decide on his replacement, instead of de Zerbi potentially accepting another job weeks before the start of the new season leaving Brighton scrambling for a new manager. As previously mentioned, de Zerbi does not appear to be the preferred candidate for the Chelsea job so it is unknown where he might end up next.

Erik ten Hag

Finally we will address Erik ten Hag’s potential departure from Manchester United. While not officially announced by the club, The Guardian reported that ten Hag’s future had been decided by new owners INEOS, with the Dutch coach to be sacked following the FA Cup final, regardless of the result of the final. As we now know, Manchester United won the FA Cup, which could give INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe a tougher decision to make, but press conferences by ETH around the FA Cup final did not offer any assurance that his future was secured. He notably said : “If they don’t want me, I will go anywhere else and win trophies. That is what I do.” So if he is sacked, he certainly doesn’t feel like he deserves to be, but it is hard to predict. Looking at ten Hag’s record with United, including his transfers, sacking him makes sense to me. However like with some of these other managerial changes, sacking him with the currently available pool of managers does not make sense, with no clear cut improvement available. United could just be victims of another trigger happy managerial change, with ETH’s replacement not faring any better, but only time will tell.

Thanks for joining me on this look back on what has undoubtedly been a strange year for managers in English football. Stay tuned for the next article!

-LM