Pereira clear favourite in chaotic Sack Race, with Nuno and Dyche already his nearest challengers

 

The Sack Race has become pure chaos, which we guess is to be expected when the Premier League table itself is just absolute nonsense wherever you care to look.

 

Arsenal are running away with it on a tide of relentless competence, while the silliness literally everywhere else sees Tottenham third despite having four points from four games at home, Bournemouth second despite selling all of their defenders in the summer, and newly promoted Sunderland sat looking down on four of the Big Six a quarter of the way through the season, just like everyone predicted.

 

Manchester United’s redemption has taken Ruben Amorim out of immediate contention, leaving Vitor Pereira a clear frontrunner and Nuno Espirito Santo in clear and present danger of losing his second job of the season.

 

 

Meanwhile, here are possible replacement managers currently between jobs.

 

 

 

19=) Mikel Arteta (Arsenal)

An earlier version of this oft-updated piece speculated on what might happen to Mikel Arteta should Arsenal suffer from their Nightmare Start. What if they lost a few early games? What then? We concluded this:

 

It’s far likelier that Arsenal emerge blinking into the autumn sunshine broadly unscathed from their nightmare horrors. No denying that this season does represent one in which Arteta might completely lose the plot and go entirely off the rails. Or the one where he wins the league by 10 points. Feels like we’re odds-on to get one or the other.

 

Arsenal emerged duly unscathed, and have already cashed in on the shift to easier fixtures of their own alongside much tougher ones for Liverpool to take top spot in the Premier League.

 

Only question that remains, therefore, is what Arsenal do from here. We are absolutely certain that it either involves p*ssing the league by 10 points or a complete and total meltdown. Nothing in between. We’re definitely leaning towards the former, though.

 

READ: Who will be the next manager of Arsenal if Mikel Arteta is sacked?

 

 

 

19=) Regis Le Bris (Sunderland)

Doing so well that even suffering the ultimate embarrassment of defeat at Old Trafford hasn’t dampened spirits for the most impressive promoted club in quite some time.

 

 

Five wins in the bag already, a five-point lead over Newcastle, and more points than Southampton managed in the entirety of 24/25. It will very much do, and importantly provides a significant buffer for Le Bris and his team as they continue a tough little run of games.

 

 

 

17=) Thomas Frank (Tottenham)

It is still very early days and still too early to tell which way a promising-but-not-flawless start eventually breaks for Frank and Spurs.

 

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He arrived to a club and squad with an awful lot of mess to sort out at history’s funniest ever Champions League qualifiers. He appeared to have already thoroughly De-Anged the lot of them only for them to then turn up against Bournemouth and defend like an Ange team while attacking like a Mourinho one.

 

You know who else won their first couple of games, including one against Man City, after stepping up to Spurs from a smaller but less daft Premier League club? That’s right. But while the Nuno comparisons are obvious, and a world in which Frank doesn’t make the November international break entirely possible, it doesn’t quite

 

 

Crucially, there has been no undignified scramble to find a new manager this time. Whatever your thoughts on the timing and manner of Ange Postecoglou’s sacking and the identity of his replacement, it’s also clear Spurs have got the man they wanted in a way they very obviously didn’t when Nuno came in.

 

That surely buys Frank a bit of time even if things do get hairy, which they will if that abysmal home form (three wins from 18 Premier League games in the last 11 months, and just one from four very winnable ones this season) can’t be sorted out. Certainly a few others going to get canned before he does. Probably.

 

 

 

17=) Eddie Howe (Newcastle)

At various points we’ve expended daft amounts of energy attempting to manifest a ‘Howe Sack’ crisis because we’re messy bitches who live for drama. But we’ve never managed to make it stick even a tiny bit and we started the summer thinking there was little imminent prospect of going for it again with Howe the hero of the Geordie Nation for delivering silverware and more lovely, lovely Champions League football.

 

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Now, though, after a traumatic summer and the Alexander Isak Saga and a sometimes iffy start to the season, our Spidey Sense is tingling once more. Currently four points outside a largely daft top six, and that won’t do, no matter what the mitigation.

 

 

 

14=) Enzo Maresca (Chelsea)

One of the key early-season imponderables for 25/26 was just how big and what kind of impact the Club World Cup might have on the way Chelsea and Man City start the season. Would they hit the ground running, or would they be a bit tired and out of sorts? For both, it’s been a little from column A, a little from column B.

 

He definitely still has some hearts and minds to win at Chelsea despite the fine finish to the season that saw them tick off Champions League qualification while completing their collection of UEFA pots and pans and then winning the actual Club World Cup.

 

A home draw with Crystal Palace wasn’t ideal, but the paddling dished out to West Ham has what really should at least be some kind of halfway credible title bid up and running at least. And we strongly suspect Fulham won’t be the last team left scratching their head after losing to Maresca.

 

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There was some talk of ‘Maresca out’ after a draw with Brentford but that was surely only a minority view. After losing to Manchester United in shambolic fashion, there were more on the bandwagon.

 

That win over Liverpool was big, though, and a particularly good one for Maresca himself. The second half thumping of Forest was handy, too, albeit inevitably saying far more of their opponents than it did of Chelsea. Home defeat to Sunderland sees awkward questions resurfacing, though, ahead of what feels a particularly significant trip to Spurs at the weekend.

 

 

 

14=) Andoni Iraola (Bournemouth)

Among the least sackable managers in the top flight, and the only club we could really picture trying to lure him away this summer was Spurs and that’s now safely off the table.

 

It was a difficult summer for Bournemouth but Iraola had masses of credit in the bank and the excellent start they’ve made despite everything is only strengthening his standing.

 

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In truth, we can’t quite understand why he’s only mid-table here. Feels like he should be out there with Arteta. It would only make sense for him to be here if a big job were currently available, and not even Forest is available for the next six weeks or so.

 

 

 

14=) Unai Emery (Aston Villa)

Funny old season for Emery already. Began the campaign right at the outside of this market with your Artetas and – unlikely as it now sounds – Slots. Then jumped right up to third favourite when Villa’s rankling disappointment at how last season ended leaked into a six-match winless start to this campaign.

 

But it’s now been four Premier League wins in a row to thoroughly lift the mood at a club where a few short weeks ago it really did feel like they’d come to the end of something special without ever getting the definitive moment of success it deserved.

 

Still feels like it could go either way, for club and manager, but that’s still significant progress on where they were a month ago when it felt far more certain. And not in a good way.

 

 

 

10=) Fabian Hurzeler (Brighton)

Fine end to 24/25 put a different complexion on Brighton’s season than at one time appeared likely. Ending up a clear best of the rest outside the quickly established top seven represented at least a passing grade and they’d have to make a truly awful start to the season to get in any kind of managerial-change bother.

 

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The win over Newcastle to go with victory at Chelsea to go with a win over City reaffirms Brighton’s big-boy-bothering calibre, but does also make some of their other results – draws with Fulham and Wolves, for instance – a bit annoying. Beating three of last season’s top five in your first eight games and still being only 10th in the table feels a little bit silly.

 

 

 

10=) David Moyes (Everton)

Things would have to go unbelievably wrong unbelievably fast, but this is Everton so, you know. Maybe. And there are few things that straddle the blessing-curse divide in football quite like a new stadium.

 

The benefits Everton should accrue come in the long term. In the short term there’s the loss of familiarity and – something that feels specifically important in this particular case – atmosphere while everyone gets used to the new surroundings.

 

Defeat at Leeds on the opening weekend was distinctly squibbish, but Everton have bounced back in some style since to suggest they could not just survive but thrive. With Jack Grealish in impish early-season form, they might even be fun. Ending Crystal Palace’s unbeaten run in such dramatic circumstances was certainly that. Consecutive defeats without scoring against Man City and Spurs not so much.

 

 

 

10=) Pep Guardiola (Man City)

A sacking remains out of the question despite last season’s (relative) struggles. There hasn’t been a Premier League manager since Fergie in his pomp with more credit in the bank than Pep.

 

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But is there still a distinct chance Guardiola decides he’s had enough and simply walks away? We reckon there is, and it’s always worth remembering that we’re talking Next Premier League Manager To Leave here, and that the traditional ‘Sack Race’ shorthand is a bit misleading.

 

Still, though. Almost no chance at this point that any of that could happen swiftly enough for nobody else to have been canned first. Especially with even a currently not entirely convincing City perhaps remaining the only halfway plausible contenders should Arsenal suffer any kind of a wobble.

 

 

 

10=) Keith Andrews (Brentford)

The continuity candidate in the summer, and looked to have received the ultimate hospital pass. How much continuity could there be at Brentford given they’d sold Bryan Mbeumo, Yoane Wissa and Christian Norgaard, while Thomas Frank took most of the remaining coaching staff with him to Tottenham? It was a very Brentford move to promote from within and we’ll hold our hands up and admit we thought it would go far, far worse than it has.

 

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With Liverpool added to Manchester United on the list of Gtech victims this season, it’s an undeniably impressive start in trying circumstances.

 

 

 

 

 

7=) Oliver Glasner (Crystal Palace)

Won’t be sacked, obviously, because Palace are absolutely punching with an elite-level manager who is quietly delivering astonishing results in trying circumstances.

 

But with reports he was willing and ready to walk out if Marc Guehi was sold without a replacement point to new strains on a relationship that is bound to be tested in the weeks and months ahead.

 

Nailed it in the Community Shield, but as ever for clubs on Palace’s level there’s a positive-and-negative scale to be balanced by your manager catching the eye so conspicuously. Glasner absolutely could be poached with bigger beasts surely paying attention to the work he’s done at Selhurst Park.

 

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And if that poaching comes from outside the Premier League, then it comes with the possibility of making Glasner the next Premier League managerial casualty. But still very unlikely.

 

We’d imagine the lowering of the threat level for a Ruben Amorim Sack at United has eased some nerves at Selhurst Park.

 

 

 

7=) Ruben Amorim (Manchester United)

Forget everything we ever wrote about Ruben Amorim being doomed; he has just engineered a 2-1 win at Anfield and it’s now three wins in a row after a rollicking good fun 4-2 win over Brighton.

 

With Forest and Spurs up next there is real scope for this to become a decent little run. That lad off the internet might even be able to get his hair cut in a couple of weeks. Amorim, meanwhile, knows ‘a couple of weeks’ is no longer the amount of time he possibly has left in the job. Everybody’s happy.

 

 

 

7=) Scott Parker (Burnley)

Burnley really did have a horrible fixture list in these opening weeks under a manager with a horrible record at this level, and were given an opening-day reminder by the team that finished 17th last season of just how much harder the ‘simply don’t concede any goals at all’ tactic might be to deploy in the Premier League.

 

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Essentially, Burnley have got back to this level the same way Homer Simpson got to a heavyweight title fight. And Spurs and City have already given them a pummelling.

 

Victories over Sunderland and Leeds were an impressive and necessary reminder that it might still be enough against teams more on their level, and while a 3-2 win at Wolves was not exactly The Burnley Way it’s still three points against an established – if struggling – Premier League side.

 

This season is already a perfect reminder of just how much more fun the Premier League is when the promoted teams are capable of competing as all three are this season. We’re approaching a quarter of the way through this season, and the three promoted teams already have over three-quarters of the total points last year’s trio managed.

 

 

 

5=) Arne Slot (Liverpool)

The mini-crisis has reached full-blown levels, and the uncomfortable truth is that Slot has reacted poorly. He went Full Klopp with his salty loser behaviour when Manchester United committed the crime of altering their tactics to give themselves the best chance of success against Liverpool, and the headloss continued after another chaotic and unstructured performance led to a 3-2 defeat at Brentford.

 

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Having ticked ‘opposition doing tactics wrong’ off his rattled manager bingo card, he can now add ‘losing his mind over entirely uncontroversial refereeing decisions’ with his response to both the Cody Gakpo non-penalty and Virgil van Dijk penalty at the Gtech.

 

It has to be a worry for Liverpool that Slot has for the first time in his Anfield career found himself under any kind of pressure after this chastening run of defeats, and has suffered severe and instant headloss as a result.

 

Have got to pull out of this tailspin soon, or something truly extraordinary really could happen here to a man who sauntered so impressively to the Premier League title in his very first season. And there is nothing obviously helpful on the immediate horizon with Crystal Palace, Aston Villa, Real Madrid and Man City to come before an interlull Slot genuinely yet ludicrously might not survive.

 

 

 

5=) Marco Silva (Fulham)

Fulham have hit a serious rough patch just as Silva was starting to be talked about for other jobs. Might be coincidence, might not, but the timing wasn’t great. A last-gasp defeat at Newcastle means it’s now four straight defeats, which is only keeping the Cottagers clear of the bottom three because those three teams are all currently just unspeakably awful.

 

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Still feels very much to us like Fulham and Silva are both better with each other than without, and would advise against anything hasty. Does need some points from somewhere soon, though. The good news? Wolves next.

 

 

 

4) Daniel Farke (Leeds)

It would have made Spurs’ decision to sack Europa League-winning Ange Postecoglou look positively kind, but there remains a decent case that Leeds – and Burnley for that matter – could or even should have thanked the managers who secured 100 Championship points and got them back into the big time and then sent them on their way.

 

Farke had a dreadful Premier League record of only six wins and 26 points from his 49 games in charge of Norwich, a team he twice led to promotion from the Championship with 94 and 97 points.

 

As well as fighting his own record in this competition, Farke faces the added burden of expectation levels very different to those at just about any other club that could possibly find itself promoted into the Premier League in this current era where that represents the most bittersweet of successes.

 

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Defeat at Burnley was honking, but bouncing back to win another six-pointer against West Ham eases the stress significantly.

 

 

 

3) Sean Dyche (Nottingham Forest)

Won his first game in charge against Porto in the Europa, and Forest played rather well too. But it’s the Premier League where Dyche will and must be judged, with getting out of relegation trouble the most obvious of primary targets. And losing as they did against Bournemouth ahead of an upcoming run that includes a resurgent Manchester United, Liverpool and a six-pointer against Leeds means it’s already quite possible to imagine the calm and thoughtful Mr Marinakis being forced into another calm and thoughtful decision about a manager he’s just appointed.

 

 

 

2) Nuno Espirito Santo (West Ham)

As a rule of thumb, you really don’t ever want to be this prominent in the Sack Race this early in the season in what is already your second job of that season. It really has been an extraordinary few months for a manager who has already this season watched his Forest side tear Brentford apart, then watched his Forest side be torn apart by West Ham, and then watched his West Ham side torn apart by Brentford.

 

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Though Nuno would be way down any list of people to blame for the Hammers’ incompetence, we do already start to wonder whether he’s the answer to any of those problems. He absolutely could be sacked twice by Christmas, with defeat at Leeds leaving West Ham already four points adrift of safety.

 

 

 

1) Vitor Pereira (Wolves)

It is the history of the Wolves. They absolutely love a sh*tbone awful start and enforced managerial change around November. The loss of key players and a disappointingly limp finish to last season after that thrilling run of wins through March and April mean those old doubts were nagging away even before a woeful pre-season, an opening-day paddling from new-look, old-destructiveness Man City and further defeats to Bournemouth, Everton, Newcastle United, Leeds and now, really damagingly, Sunderland after a pair of encouraging draws.

 

Pereira should theoretically be fine after the work he did in steering Wolves so comfortably clear of any relegation trouble last season contributed heavily to him being give a new three-year contract in September. But making terrible starts that leave them in apparent relegation trouble before surviving comfortably in the end after a managerial change appears to now be ingrained in the club culture, an issue that transcends players and managers.

 

 

Looked set to get the full benefit of good ol’ Dr Tottenham before having to settle for a point that really should have been three; they were much the better side in a low-quality caper.

 

Sent off in the 1-1 draw with Brighton for ‘irresponsible behaviour in the technical area’. Which we just love. Was he running with scissors? Did he return to a lit firework? Purchase alcohol for some youths?