The 10 wildest managerial downgrades in Premier League history: Nuno to Postecoglou 2nd…
The early signs are that Nottingham Forest‘s decision to sack Nuno Espirito Santo and replace him with Ange Postecoglou could go down as one of the worst managerial changes in Premier League history.
It certainly wouldn’t be the first bold managerial change that turned out to be disaster. There have been a fair few over the years.
We’ve ranked 10 of the wildest downgrades in Premier League history.
10. Tottenham – Mauricio Pochettino to Jose Mourinho
Mourinho would scoff at being called a downgrade from anyone, and justifiably so when you look at his trophy cabinet.
In 2019, Daniel Levy’s eyes lit up at the prospect of landing a proven winner and a charismatic presence to carry their ‘All or Nothing’ Amazon documentary. The reality proved quite different.
Pochettino and his intensive tactical style were at the vanguard of how football was played at the time. Mourinho, off the back of three jobs that ended in acrimony, very much wasn’t.
9. West Ham – David Moyes to Julen Lopetegui
West Ham’s most successful manager since John Lyall, after delivering European silverware, Moyes was jettisoned at the end of the 2023-24 campaign.
His sensible pragmatism had apparently grown boring, the lure of sexy continental dogma proving too strong.
Short memories, evidently having learned little from a man who promised lots but delivered in between Moyes’ two considerably more successful stints in east London.
Lopetegui’s attempts to instil a philosophy fell flat and he was out of the door after eight months. Then Potter’s attempts to instil a philosophy fell flat and he was out of the door after eight months.
We’re sensing a pattern here. Back to pragmatism it is.
8. Leeds United – Marcelo Bielsa to Jesse Marsch
Bielsa’s brand of football is responsible for a phenomenon known as the ‘widows of Bielsa’ in which supporters of his old teams will travel across the world to see the master at work.
The Argentinian’s unforgettable stint as Leeds United manager saw fans of Newell’s Old Boys, Chile and Athletic Club regularly turn up at Elland Road.
‘Widows of Marsch’ don’t really exist. If they did, they’d probably listen to the High Performance podcast and brag about LinkedIn being their social media platform of choice.
Marsch’s defenders (inevitably based in America) argued that he kept Leeds up when they looked to be going down under his predecessor, but that doesn’t tell the whole story.
When he was given the keys to rebuild the squad in his own image, it quickly became clear that the ‘succession plan’ the Leeds board had promised was built on sand.
The intricate positional play of Bielsa’s best football had been replaced by something crass and rudimentary, sacrificing width by going hopelessly direct. Raphinha on long throws said it all.
7. Chelsea – Thomas Tuchel to Graham Potter
Roman Abramovich swapped managers like stickers, but trophies remained something of a constant during the Russian oligarch’s 19-year reign.
Trust Todd Boehly to pull off a worse managerial downgrade than Abramovich ever managed at his first time of asking.
Time has not been kind to this decision.
6. Charlton – Alan Curbishley to Iain Dowie
Gen Z won’t remember Charlton as an established Premier League force.
Their top-flight status was almost entirely down to Curbishley’s influence, who sat in the dugout for 15 years and was quietly among the Premier League’s best coaches of the early noughties.
You can trace Charlton languishing in the Football League to how royally they messed up replacing him in 2006.
Dowie’s CV as a fledgling coach included getting Crystal Palace relegated and failing to get them back up. Who could’ve foreseen him being a disaster?
5. Blackburn Rovers – Sam Allardyce to Steve Kean
Big Sam’s been happy enough to descend into self-parody in his retirement years, but that dinosaur persona – of course he’s got a podcast called Tippy Tappy Football – does a disservice to how genuinely decent a coach he was during the Barclays era.
Venky’s sacking of Allardyce was a poor decision. Replacing him with former assistant Kean was a worse one.
On the face of it, Kean appeared cut from the same no-nonsense proper football man cloth as Allardyce.
But it quickly became apparent he didn’t have the chops. The face of Blackburn’s downfall under Venky’s.
READ: An ode to mid-2000s Blackburn, the peak Barclays mix of silk and steel
4. Arsenal – Arsene Wenger to Unai Emery
We need not state that Emery is a very good manager. We’d have him replacing Steven Gerrard somewhere near the top of a managerial upgrades ranking.
But it’s also safe to say that the Basque coach wasn’t the right choice to be the guy after the guy at Arsenal.
There were bigger mitigating factors, but you get the sense that Emery’s awkward and often unconvincing demeanour made him the perfect foil for things to get worse before they’d get better.
3. Everton – Carlo Ancelotti to Rafael Benitez
Call it the mother of all vibe shifts.
Everton went from one European-winning manager to another after Don Carlo’s return to Real Madrid, but the fit couldn’t have been more different.
Ancelotti had Everton up in the top four on Christmas Day 2020 – 12 places and 11 points clear of Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal.
They fell away in the second half of the season, but their fans could dream with an elite coach in charge of their best team in ages.
Appointing one of Liverpool’s most popular coaches as his replacement was never going to go down well.
Sure enough, Benitez oversaw the start of a doom spiral that saw Everton circling the plughole for four straight seasons.
2. Nottingham Forest – Nuno Espirito Santo to Ange Postecoglou
As outlined above, West Ham’s decision to trade Moyes for Lopetegui was swapping pragmatism for idealism.
You’ve also got Nuno Espirito Santo leading Nottingham Forest a whisker away from Champions League qualification thanks to a well-drilled defence and effective counter-attacking gameplan.
Pragmatism is back in, baby, and Nuno is its most successful proponent. Forest making this change, after all the evidence of last season, is downright baffling.
Swapping the manager who led Forest to 7th, three points off the top four, with the manager who led Spurs to 17th.
That could go down as an all-timer of a terrible decision – and the early signs certainly point that way.
1. Manchester United – Sir Alex Ferguson to David Moyes
We couldn’t put anything else at No.1, could we?
Going from one straight-talking Glaswegian who’d earned their stripes to another made some degree of sense.
But what worked in 1986 was never going to work in 2013. Not least Ferguson being afforded the patience of seven years to deliver a first league title.
Ultimately, Moyes just didn’t have the juice. Sometimes it’s as simple as that.
Well-intentioned but naive, United’s bungling of their succession plan, when they could have landed Guardiola, is responsible for the sorry mess they find themselves in to this day.
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