Manager mayhem kicks off 2026

Last week I jotted down a list of things I would love to see happen in football over the coming year.

Some of them were drastic – like binning VAR – some of them even more unlikely – like returning to the days when only proper winners were allowed to take part in European competitions.

But one of my quirky favourites was my suggestion that clubs should be forced to stick with their manager for an entire season, come what may, thick or thin.

It would radically shake up the sport, create some unexpected twists, and make clubs think twice about who they appoint, and why. Heck, it might even go some way towards making football less predictable, with rich teams unable to hire and fire bosses on a whim.

It’s a suggestion I have put forward before, and it probably remains as fanciful now as it did the first time I brought it up.

Yet recent events have made my bizarre concept all the more topical.

Because last week, British football, as it regularly does, decided it would be a good time to put the managerial merry-go-round into overdrive and turn this season’s sack race into a sprint. Dugouts up and down the country were again fitted with revolving doors, as patience, already an endangered concept in the football realm, officially became extinct.

Now, to be fair, not all sackings are created equal. Some are panicky, some are arguable, and a few are probably justified. But having so many at the same time shows they can happen far too easily, especially if you have money.

Chelsea, as they often do, got the ball rolling by binning Enzo Maresca just a few short months after he won them the Club World Cup and the Europa Conference League, confirming their reputation as a club that appoints managers for long-term projects but panics whenever there is short-term discomfort.

They moved swiftly to appoint Liam Rosenior, widely regarded as one of the best young managers in the game. He is bright, progressive, a superb man-manager and now the proud owner of a six-and-a-half-year contract at Stamford Bridge.

Which probably isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

To even get close to seeing that through, Rosenior will need to win at least a dozen trophies, never fail to qualify for Europe, cure world hunger, and smile politely without questioning the club’s owners through every press conference for 78 months.

Manchester United’s situation is more complicated because Ruben Amorim didn’t lose his job because of bad performances – that ship would have sailed many months ago, given their form, which has fluctuated between erratic and awful.

He lost his job because his relationship with the powers behind the scenes collapsed in public. His comments about structure, recruitment and authority weren’t outrageous, but they were revealing, and at United, revealing things tends to shorten your lifespan.

This is a club that has spent close to £100 million firing managers since Sir Alex Ferguson left, while trimming lower-level staff to save money. It would be laughable if people’s livelihoods weren’t being affected.

But if you want a case study in manager mismanagement, look further north.

Celtic had an interim boss in Martin O’ Neill who was doing exceptionally well, taking the club on a brilliant run up the league and into a cup final. They removed him anyway, in the name of ‘strategy’ and ‘projects’ and replaced him with Wilfried “Who?” Nancy.

Nancy lasted just 33 days, a shorter spell than O’Neill’s temporary reign. During those ill-fated four-and-a-half weeks, he fiddled tirelessly with tactic boards, talked about how the future was bright, and waxed lyrical about his own talents. All while his team were busy getting hammered on the pitch every few days.

Realising they had made a mistake of cosmic proportions, appointing a mediocre manager with no experience of European football, the Celtic leadership decided they needed to replace the replacement. And brought back O’Neill. As interim manager. Again.

Being fired has become safer, and sometimes more profitable, than fighting to fix a broken ‘project’

If Chelsea are impulsive and United confused, Celtic are utterly dysfunctional. Making changes not to move forward, but to end up exactly where they started, only poorer and with increased fan unrest.

And if you think this managerial mayhem has been confined to the biggest clubs last week, it hasn’t. West Bromwich Albion pulled the plug on Ryan Mason barely six months into a three-year deal while Aberdeen sacked Jimmy Thelin just seven months after he delivered their first Scottish Cup in 35 years.

It’s story after story that underlines just how fragile the modern managerial role has become even for those that win things. Yesterday’s success quickly becomes today’s inconvenience for one reason or another.

But one of most interesting things about last week’s collective chaos is that, as we saw at United and Chelsea, we have now reached a stage where some managers not only don’t fear the sack, they try to manifest it.

In my mind, both Amorim and Maresca pushed to get fired by subtly picking public fights with their respective clubs.

We have reached a stage where the modern way out of a club when you are unhappy is making a few pointed comments in the press that you know will push your bosses’ buttons and then sit back to wait for the hammer to fall.

Say just enough to expose the cracks, question the structure without naming names, hint at frustrations, and let the story do the hard lifting towards a big financial payout.

If you’re on a long contract with a healthy compensation clause, why wouldn’t you? Being fired has become safer, and sometimes more profitable, than fighting to fix a broken ‘project’.

My idea of keeping managers for a full season may be unworkable in reality. I get that.

But I genuinely think there must be a better way of clubs treating managers – and, occasionally, managers treating clubs – than this.

E-mail: jamescalvertmalta@gmail.com

X: @maltablade