Premier League managers face high turnover risk with nearly half fired within a season

New managers are facing an almost one-in-two chance of being fired before the end of the season, a finding from Guardian analysis that shows 22 of the past 50 permanent Premier League managers to leave their roles lasted less than a year.

The betting markets reflect this reality. Six of the eight Premier League managers deemed most likely by bookmakers to be next to leave their post were appointed in 2026. Football management is a very precarious employment position. It looks inevitable that some of the 11 men who have only been in their role since earlier this year will fall before the end of the 2026-27 season – even if none of them are the first to move on.

Vítor Pereira, Graham Potter and Thomas Frank became managers of Wolves, West Ham and Tottenham respectively in 2025, started last season in those roles and yet were removed by mid-February of this year at the latest. Across the preceding decade, 25 men who started a season as a new manager, appointed in that year, did not see out the season in question.

Uncertainty reigns because managerial turnover is so high, making predictions near-impossible. Nottingham Forest are at Anfield on Saturday; they have recently done well at Liverpool, winning on their past two visits. The first of those, in September 2024, was the only Premier League defeat the Reds suffered in the first 30 games of what became a title-winning campaign. Arne Slot mentioned it in interviews for months afterwards, so bothered was he by the loss. But a lot has changed since then. The visitors were managed by Nuno Espírito Santo for the first of their two recent Anfield wins, Sean Dyche for the second. Forest are already on to their second manager since the latter was dismissed. Even allowing for Evangelos Marinakis’s volatile approach, the theme of rapid turnover of head coaches pervades the Premier League in 2026.

All of which raises an interesting question. Where once we might have looked at the head-to-head record between two clubs ahead of a clash, should we now focus on the managers instead? What they bring tactically and how quickly they can implement their ideas is increasingly relevant at the top level of English football.

Nottingham Forest’s Oliver Glasner makes for an ideal case study, not least because he is among the favourites to be the next Premier League manager to leave his post. He has a fantastic record against Liverpool, winning four of his seven matches in all competitions against them including a successful penalty shootout in the Community Shield. He has only three victories in 21 games against Manchester United (two wins), Manchester City (one), Arsenal and Chelsea (both none). Glasner cracked Slot’s tactical code in a way he has not yet for the managers of most other big clubs.

But Glasner has a poor record against Liverpool’s new head coach, Andoni Iraola. From the five matches in which their Crystal Palace and Bournemouth sides met, the latter took two wins, three draws and kept four clean sheets. As they were 2-0 and 3-2 up in an eventful 3-3 draw at Selhurst Park last season, Iraola’s grip over Glasner could have been tighter still.

How strongly that dominance comes into play this weekend is not easy to divine. Liverpool appeared very much like last season’s flawed side under Slot in their 2-2 draw at Newcastle last weekend. Their new manager has much work to do.

Glasner’s issues with Bournemouth may not improve this season. He and Marco Rose are each the manager the other has faced most often, their paths having crossed on 16 occasions. Rose dominates the win count by nine to two in what is the most frequent head-to-head among the 190 possible combinations of two current Premier League managers.

Only just over half of those potential match-ups have previously occurred (97), even though the men leading Premier League clubs have collectively faced almost 1,700 different managers. Multiple coaches with no experience in England taking up positions this summer has left lots of combinations open for now. Rose and Glasner will share their first meeting outside their respective home countries, Germany and Austria, in mid-November when Forest travel to the Vitality Stadium. There are numerous instances of managers who were appointed this summer clashing before then though.

Not until week nine is there no such match, with weeks 16 and 27 the only other examples across the whole season. Even then, those rounds feature games between a brand new manager and the recently appointed Roberto De Zerbi. A total of 110 matches this season – 28.9% of the total – are currently scheduled to feature two managers who were appointed in 2026.

Iraola’s first campaign on Merseyside is heavily bookended by games of this nature. Liverpool face new managers in their first six matches, and also in seven of the final 10 games. The issue is whether the coaching opponents in question will still be in post when spring rolls around.