Nine Premier League clubs have new bosses. Any manager sacked by 30 September?
The Premier League season opened with a record 9 managers in their first league game for their club. Average time in the job is a record low 474 days.
What happened
A record nine Premier League clubs begin 2026-27 with a manager taking charge of his first league game for the club, the most in an English top-flight season since 1946-47, with average tenure across the 20 clubs at 474 days, the lowest opening-day figure of the Premier League era.
The transfer window closes at 23:00 BST on Tuesday . It opened on . After it closes, a manager who is struggling can no longer blame an unfinished squad. A club board that wants a change must then choose between acting before the September international break and waiting for the winter.
Nine of the 20 clubs start the season with a manager appointed since the end of 2025-26. Opta’s figures show this is the most managers taking charge of a first league game for a club on an opening weekend in the English top flight since 1946-47.
The average time in the job across the 20 clubs is 474 days, the lowest on opening day in the Premier League era. The five-season average for finished spells in the job is 1.9 years, the fourth lowest on record.
The nine are Marco Rose at Bournemouth, Xabi Alonso at Chelsea, Pierre Sage at Crystal Palace, Alvaro Arbeloa at Fulham, Gary O’Neil at Ipswich, Andoni Iraola at Liverpool, Enzo Maresca at Manchester City, Matthias Jaissle at Newcastle and Oliver Glasner at Nottingham Forest. Manchester United and Tottenham have managers who arrived in January and March.
At the other end, Mikel Arteta had been in charge at Arsenal for 2,432 days by . The average age of a Premier League manager is 47.1, the youngest in twenty years.
Sources: Sky Sports, Premier League
The Pattern
We looked at every Premier League season since 2017-18 and asked one question: did any club sack its manager on or before ? A club announcing a sacking, a parting of company or a manager relieved of duties all count. Managers who resigned to join another club, or who left before the season or as temporary caretakers, do not.
Show the other 6 cases
The Read
History leans slightly against a September sacking. Three of the last eight seasons had one, and each needed more than a poor start: a 9-0 defeat, one point from four games, or a public row with the owner. What pushes this season up is the number of new managers. Nine boards have a manager with no history at the club, time in the job is at a record low, and the window closing on removes the last excuse. No earlier season in the record had this many new managers, so the first market sits a little above three in eight.
The case against is that clubs usually give a new manager time. A club that hired in the summer, backed him in the transfer window and paid compensation to the manager before him has every financial reason to wait. In the other five seasons the first sacking came between and . Without a clear crisis, the prediction fails quietly: a run of narrow defeats, a board that waits for the November break, and nothing to settle in September.
Disclaimer
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