It’s the richest and toughest league in world football, and the Premier League is big business, which means results are paramount. And if you underachieve, then you may as well pack your bags.
In this results-now and cut-throat world, the English top-flight can be a brutal place to be, as six managers have already discovered this season, all sacked, and two of them fired by the same club – Nottingham Forest.
At the bottom end of the table, West Ham United dismissed Graham Potter early in the campaign and replaced him with Nuno Espirito Santo who had, bizarrely, been sacked by Nottingham Forest, and the Hammers have recently shown some sign of life.
Meanwhile, bottom club Wolverhampton Wanderers showed Vitor Pereira the exit door to replace him with Rob Edwards, the man who led Luton Town to the Premier League. Edwards left Middlesbrough, the form team riding high in second place in the Championship and well on course for promotion, while Wolves are rooted at the bottom of the Premier League with a paltry eight points, 17 for safety, and hurtling towards the second tier. Why did Edwards jump ship? You’ll have to ask him that.
But the biggest news in the New Year has been the changes at Chelsea and Manchester United, where the two big spenders have parted company with Enzo Maresca and Ruben Amorim, replaced by Liam Rosenior and Michael Carrick.
The case of Maresca is the curious one. After leading Leicester City to the 2024 Championship he was poached by Chelsea, and he had a unifying effect at Stamford Bridge, delivering two trophies in the process. First, the Blues won the Europa Conference League, and then they picked up the prestigious FIFA Club World Cup, hammering Champions League winners PSG in the final.
Rosenior seems to have settled well at the Bridge, and he’s carrying on the good work of Maresca, who departed on the 1st January amidst tensions with the club’s owners.
When Ruben Amorim left Manchester United, it was less of a surprise. He arrived from Sporting Lisbon, where he had won two Portuguese league titles, as the Red Devils continued their 12-year process of trying to find a winning manager. But Amorim struggled at Old Trafford, winning 24 of 63 games and losing 21, which is quite a disappointment, particularly as Manchester United don’t have the pressures of European football to contend with.
He left on 5th January with the club in sixth place and was replaced by Carrick, a former player at the club under Sir Alex Ferguson, and he has delivered two remarkable results, with wins over the top two, Manchester City and Arsenal. Red Devils fans can be excused for getting giddy. They love an ex-player at the helm, and to beat the Sky Blues in particular will have been a sweet, sweet sensation. But they will also be aware that Carrick parted company with Middlesbrough last summer after failing twice to deliver a play-off place.
Manchester United are up to fourth in the table with Chelsea in fifth, but with the top three having broken away and Liverpool showing signs of revival, the latest Premier League 2026 betting odds say it will be difficult for either to finish in the Champions League places.
Marinakis or Dyche, who would you back?
Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis is one of the most belligerent characters in world football, a larger-than-life presence who takes no prisoners. He’s not a man to mess with, as he proved when he sacked Nuno Espirito Santo, the manager who delivered European football to Forest after a long period as lower division also-rans. And Marinakis must take some of the credit, I guess, after he bankrolled the club’s revival. But I question his judgment.
To sack the successful Nuno and replace him with Ange Postecoglou, the hugely likeable Aussie, put Marinakis in the middle of the early season Premier League 2026 news headlines. And he was in the eye of the media storm again when he potted Postecoglou, who led Tottenham Hotspur to Europa League success and 17th place in the Premier League last term after just eight games in charge. At that point, Forest were in the relegation mire, so the owner changed strategy to appoint the formidable Sean Dyche.
Now this SBOTOP writer had a happy decade watching Burnley under Dyche, seeing the Clarets establish themselves as a respected Premier League club, with six consecutive seasons in the top-flight, two Top 10 finishes, and a foray into Europe. Dyche is a no-nonsense manager and an underrated one at that, and at Forest, he has probably the best group of players of his career. He is a legend in Burnley, but as a former Forest youth player, Dyche is back home, and he has pulled Forest five points clear of the drop.
All is not well at the City Ground, and Dyche has plenty of work to do. But my belief is he will steer Forest to safety, and he is certainly the right man to stand up to the owner, with whom he had a spat when Olympiacos beat Burnley in a highly controversial Europa League game back in 2018.
Marinakis or Dyche, I know who I’d want on my side.
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