Leeds United board given Jesse Marsch manager deadline as alarming Premier League trend emerges - YEP 26/10/22
The YEP has conducted research into mid-season managerial changes in the Premier League over the past three seasons to discover an alarming reality given Leeds United’s precarious position
By Joe Donnohue
Over the past three full Premier League seasons, there have
been 20 mid-season managerial changes. Less than 50 per cent (9/20) of which
resulted in a team finishing higher than the position they were in when their
previous manager left the club. This presents Leeds United’s board of directors
with a difficult proposition as the team currently sit 18th in the table and
failure to improve on their standing will result in relegation.
Fortunately, Leeds have time on their side. Only 11 of this
season’s 38 Premier League fixtures have been played and there are still 81
points up for grabs, however given the team’s current form – winless in eight,
picking up two points from the last 24 available – the prospect of a rapid
turnaround in fortunes appears somewhat slim.
Head coach Jesse Marsch has fielded several questions in
recent press conferences, querying whether he remains the man to lead United
out of the situation they currently find themselves in. While the American
insists Leeds’ board are ‘unified’ behind him, similar guarantees have not been
provided, at least not publicly, by directors and key decision-makers at the
club.
So far, the Leeds hierarchy have, by default, decided to
stick by the man they entrusted with backroom appointments and took advice from
regarding player signings this summer.
In Marsch’s favour is a league-wide trend observed in recent
years, in which mid-season managerial changes have rarely seen teams improve
considerably when changing manager or head coach. Only 25 per cent of teams who
made mid-season appointments improved on their league position by two-or-more
places in the Premier League table, over the past three seasons. In 2019/20,
Watford swapped Javi Gracia for Quique Sanchez Flores, before deciding the
Spaniard should be replaced by Nigel Pearson; they moved from 20th at the time
of Gracia’s sacking, to 19th by the end of the campaign.
Similarly, a year later, West Bromwich Albion and Sheffield
United parted with Slaven Bilic and Chris Wilder, respectively, with their
teams in 19th and 20th place. Neither side improved on their position by the
end of the season. Norwich City’s decision to remove Daniel Farke in 2021/22
with the team 20th in the table, yielded no material improvement from Dean
Smith whose Canaries finished bottom of the pile. Meanwhile, Burnley’s late
attempt to salvage their season by sacking Sean Dyche saw them relegated,
despite their best efforts, having been 18th when Dyche left Turf Moor.
There have been outliers, though; Eddie Howe lifted a
winless Newcastle United from 19th to 11th place last season, while two years
prior, Everton were guided to a 12th place finish by Carlo Ancelotti, after
Marco Silva was sacked with the team in 18th . Perhaps crucially, both of those
managerial changes were made before the halfway stage of the season.
In total, five of the seven teams who changed manager whilst
marooned in the bottom three, since the beginning of 2019/20, were relegated at
the end of that season, which begs the question: have Leeds already left it too
late?
Marsch is expected to remain in the dugout for this
weekend’s fixture against Liverpool, and this season’s unique World Cup
fire-break offers Premier League chairmen and directors an extended period to
think long and hard about the ramifications of mid-season axe-swinging. The
data alone suggests things are unlikely to improve, but certainly not
impossible.
