Who will be the next Premier League manager to be sacked?

Erik Ten Hag and Steve Cooper have already fallen by the wayside this season, the former paying the price for a sustained spell of abject terribleness and the latter apparently doomed by the shame of *checks notes* a narrow defeat to Chelsea.

Anyway. The Sack Race never stops, it just shifts targets. And now the glare lands ever more harshly on the relegation-haunted stylings of the managers at Southampton, Everton and Wolves, as well as the feast-or-famine antics of especially Spurs but especially West Ham.

Here’s the latest order of things according to Oddschecker.

1) Gary O’Neil
Things were generally looking up despite that fairly nasty setback against Bournemouth, which is good because they really, really couldn’t have got any worse. The 4-1 caper at Fulham, which on a sane weekend would have been easily the most eye-catching of away wins, made it eight points from four games after one point from the first eight.

But then they conceded eight goals in two games v Bournemouth and Everton and then stumbled to El Sackico defeat at West Ham to leave O’Neil right on the precipice. The next two games – against Ipswich and Leicester – appear to be absolutely vital to Wolves’ chances this season. Whether O’Neil is in charge for one or both remains far less clear.

2) Julen Lopetegui
Stormed out of Wolves days before the season began a year ago and West Ham is a club that could test the patience of a saint. Really does have some of the very best attacking players outside the Big Six to work with, which hopefully reduces the potential for huffing off at the first sign of trouble.

Which is just as well, because the first sign of trouble duly arrived. It’s all a bit feast-or-famine for the Hammers at the moment, with their last five Premier League results including a 4-1 thrashing of Ipswich and a very, very funny Ten Hag-dooming win over Manchester United but also absolute paddlings from Tottenham and Surprise Package Nottingham Forest, as well as a soulless goalless draw with Everton. It’s the sort of maddening run that could easily fray a character like Lopetegui.

The fact a sacking or huffing are equally acceptable in this market does make this feel like it could be a goer, given Lopetegui’s reputation. However, when apparently handed (ludicrously) two games to save himself he promptly won the first of them at Newcastle and then lost the second heavily to Arsenal. If that left the Hammers hierarchy on the fence, you’d have to imagine a 3-1 defeat at Leicester would get them back off it, but he lived to fight another day and got a very necessary three points against Wolves that has at the very least (and quite probably the most) delayed the inevitable.

3) Ange Postecoglou
Just an endlessly fascinating manager of a wild football team. There is a growing sense that while it’s all quite fun he really is just building – at, it should be noted, huge expense – the most ‘Lads, it’s Tottenham’ Tottenham team yet.

That sensational dismantling of Man City was Spurs’ 10th win in 14 games across three competitions since being outwitted by Arsenal in the NLD, and yet the defeats were unbelievably stupid: from 2-0 up at Brighton, at a Palace team that hadn’t won a league game in their first eight attempts, a Europa schooling at Galatasaray that somehow ended only 3-2, and at home against an Ipswich team looking for a first win in their 11th attempt.

And since that magnificent win at City, Spurs have been, frankly, sh*t. They’ve drawn snatched a draw from the jaws of victory against Roma, drew a game they should have lost at home to Fulham and then produced an abject display in defeat to Bournemouth which got the away fans’ backs up and Ange’s back up at the fans’ backs being up. And then done another real big stupid v Chelsea.

But you also can’t just ignore those 10 wins, especially as so many of them have been hugely impressive. There’s definitely something about the contrasting nature of Spurs’ wins and losses. They’ve won six Premier League games and lost seven, and yet they have a goal difference of +12, the fourth best in the division. Only Chelsea have scored more goals. Their defeats are all by the odd goal (although that Chelsea defeat was admittedly the most 4-0 of any 4-3 defeat), while only one of their wins has been by less than three goals and that was by two.

The pattern is clear: when they are good, Postecoglou’s Spurs blow teams away. Even your Villas and Man Citys. But when they are bad they generally get nothing, against anyone. And they are bad just far, far too often.

Really does feel like if Spurs are happy to go back to the good old pre-Big Six days of being an entertaining but ultimately irrelevant team who’ll have some good days and some terrible days while finishing mid-table and maybe having a bit of a run at a cup occasionally, then Big Ange is absolutely fine. But increasingly hard to see how playing what at times amounts to wilfully stupid football stupidly ever amounts to more than that.

READ: Spurs are exciting?! Make that ‘exhausting’ if you are a fan under Postecoglou

4) Russell Martin
We feared it might all go a bit Vincent Kompany for Russell Martin, and four defeats from the first four was definitely a bit Burnley, as was conceding a late equaliser against Ipswich and indeed going down pretty convincingly at Bournemouth and then losing from 2-0 at home to Leicester of all teams. But he’s got a win under his belt now at least – promptly followed by further defeats, sure – and Burnley stuck with Kompany, didn’t they? Right up until he buggered off.

Russell Martin is the next manager of Bayern Munich, is what we’re saying here.

READ: The deluded arrogance of Southampton means only way is down

5) Eddie Howe
Could absolutely go tits skyward at any moment and there are clearly key figures at Newcastle not quite seeing eye to eye, and it would be fair to say Newcastle’s performances in their first four games weren’t really performances you’d expect to yield a hugely impressive 10 points. That run of fortune came to an end at Fulham in quite emphatic style but the performance against Man City was their best of the season. Should really have beaten Everton and probably Brighton but a team that appeared to be reverting to the mean – and not in a good way – then turned Arsenal over good and proper.

Howe had looked a likely contender for next manager in crisis, and defeat against West Ham followed by a draw against Palace helped after those back-to-back wins against Arsenal and Forest had rather silenced it all. But then they drew with Liverpool in a game they probably should have won to challenge Spurs in the Spursiness, before being the latest team to succumb to whatever spell has been cast on the Gtech this season.

6=) Sean Dyche
Last Sunday’s hammering at Manchester United was a terrible start to a horrible run of upcoming games and meant Everton were without a win in five and sinking fast. And then they went and battered Wolves 4-0. The postponement of the Merseyside Derby is a double-edged sword, isn’t it? Does slightlty break up that nasty run of fixtures, but at the same time you wonder how many games there will be this season that Everton go in to on the back of a 4-0 win and how many Liverpool go in to on the back of a disappointing draw.

6=) Pep Guardiola
Can’t recall Guardiola ever being this prominent in the Sack Race, but these are unprecedented times. City lost five games in a row – two of them to the inexplicable City-scuppering Kryptonite of Tottenham – and Guardiola signing a new contract has failed to provide the intended security and clarity. They even managed to end that losing run in surely the worst way any team has ever ended a losing run ever, by drawing 3-3 at home in a game they led 3-0 with 15 minutes remaining.

And after another humbling defeat at Anfield to the runaway leaders Liverpool, City found themselves 11 points off the pace with rival supporters merrily singing about Guardiola getting sacked in the morning. Beating Nottingham Forest in the next game took the pressure off somewhat, and then a draw v Palace was not even surprising anymore.

8) Kieran McKenna
Ipswich spent a good chunk of the start of the summer fending off interest in their manager and a difficult start to the season on their long-awaited return to the Premier League is surely baked in. Glib and simplistic it may be, but the comparisons between Luton and Ipswich and thus Rob Edwards and McKenna are easily made. And Luton never once looked like getting rid of Edwards last season.

Ipswich may only have one win but there’s been nothing about them to suggest they’re going to spend the season being horribly outclassed every week either. Probably helps them that others down at the bottom of the table are finding wins equally hard to come by and with less by way of mitigation, but six draws tell a story of a team and manager who have swiftly found a way to compete at this level.

9) Ruud van Nistelrooy
Didn’t ever feel as though there would be much of a honeymoon period incoming for a man who has already been in charge for two hefty Leicester defeats this season and beating West Ham 3-1 if anything cast more doubt over his ability to keep them up this season. But drawing with Brighton is a positive.

10) Oliver Glasner
It’s not been pretty but just one defeat in seven has taken them to 16th in the Premier League table with hope that they might climb.

11=) Thomas Frank
Sits quietly in the top 10 contenders for quite a lot of other jobs but the resolution to the United manager situation means Brentford fans can all rest a touch easier for a while.

Brentford did flirt with serious trouble for uncomfortably long periods last season, but there was never any really serious chat about binning the manager who has done so very much for them and it would need to be going really, really badly for that to change this time around, you’d think. Have started this season perfectly well, albeit with an almost comical disparity between home results (excellent) and away results (pish).

11=) Marco Silva
Fulham have spent the last couple of seasons in near invisibility in mid-table, which is very much a good thing. Rode out the loss of Aleksandar Mitrovic really well last term and once again they looked set for a year of bobbing about harmlessly enough in mid-table.

But it’s getting to a tricky point for Silva, in a way. He’s doing a perfectly adequate job, but almost if anything too adequate for me, Clive. He’s in danger of finding that unwanted zone where he’s invisible to bigger clubs who might be on the lookout for a new manager while by far the most likely way he does get noticed is if things start going very badly rather than very well. Beating Brighton 3-1 is far less noteworthy than losing 4-1 to Wolves, for example.

11=) Unai Emery
It is starting to look like Villa are the latest side to find that success can come at a price, and the struggle to adapt to a relentless Champions League-Premier League two-games-a-week schedule very real. It’s happened to Spurs. It happened to Newcastle. And it does appear to now be happening to Villa, who will be very relieved indeed to have played Brentford and Southampton at home to end a rotten run.

11=) Nuno Espirito Santo
Forest are quite mad so rule nothing out after a couple of momentum-checking defeats, but they are already beyond halfway to a survival-securing points haul. It would be quite something for Nuno to be next manager out from that position, wouldn’t it? At any other club outside the gilded elite it would be inconceivable.

11=) Enzo Maresca
Results are awkwardly not really matching the narrative around Chelsea, who avoided complete catastrophe against City on the opening day and look increasingly tidy on the pitch since despite the never-ending swirl of chaos off it.

Big away wins at Wolves, West Ham, and the home dismantling of Brighton have hinted at rich potential for Maresca’s side among all the nonsense, while even in defeat at Liverpool there were encouraging signs to be seen and more still in a Cole Palmer-inspired win over Newcastle and a pretty serious paddling of Aston Villa before bantering Spurs off in familiarly ridiculous fashion.

They currently appear more plausible title contenders than Manchester City, and it’s fair to say few were predicting that back in August.

11=) Fabian Hurzeler
Another intriguing new face in Our League, tasked with getting Brighton back to where they were a year ago before things just took a turn for the dreary in Roberto De Zerbi’s first and final full season in charge.

They almost completely forgot how to win games in the second half of the season, which isn’t ideal, but the new manager made a quite literally perfect start in ironing out that particular wrinkle and a point at the Emirates is almost never a bad way to drop your first points of the season. Subsequent draws with Ipswich and Forest slightly more niggling, but no real drama. And getting battered by Chelsea is not as humiliating as we thought it would have been two months ago.

Hurzeler has now also made a vital step that all managers who hope to make their way in the Barclays must: inflict hilarious embarrassment on Tottenham. Beating Man City from behind will go down quite well too. Defeat to Fulham less so.

11=) Andoni Iraola
What’s he up to here, then? Bournemouth had eight points from their first seven games, which isn’t exactly a crisis but wasn’t a brilliant start either. His side then took seven points from games against Arsenal, Villa and Man City before losing to Brentford and Brighton. And then won 4-2 at Wolves before entirely outplaying Tottenham. It’s an extreme example, but does all tie in with the overriding feeling from last season that Iraola isn’t far away from doing something quite special if he can it all to come together at Bournemouth over a sustained period of time.

11=) Mikel Arteta
Appears to have emerged out of the other side of an uncomfortably choppy period and will probably be relieved that it’s ‘only’ Liverpool who have disappeared off into the distance rather than Manchester City again.

Work to do to get back in the title race now, but every indication in recent weeks that they are capable of doing so if – but it’s a big and steadily growing if week by week – Liverpool show some signs of weakness.

11=) Ruben Amorim
You have to at least admit it would be funny.

20) Arne Slot
Liverpool’s home defeat to Forest stands as comfortably the most jarringly unexpected of the season to date, bringing to a shuddering halt a perfect start that had got a lot of people quite understandably quite excited. The Reds have bounced back well, beating Bournemouth and Wolves and most significantly Chelsea in their first major test of the season before taking a 2-2 draw from an entertaining trip to the Emirates. A come-from-behind win over Brighton on a weekend when Arsenal, City and Villa all lost while Chelsea also dropped points is, you would have to say, handy.

Weren’t great in a dicey 3-2 win at Southampton, but then eased to wins over Real Madrid and Man City like it was nothing. There was a draw at Newcastle but they are still four points clear at the top of the table with a game in hand. Which is nice.