Bournemouth’s ruthless O’Neil sacking is a gamble history shows could work

On Monday afternoon it was difficult not to flash back to the surprising chain of events on the other side of the New Forest on 18 January 2013. A decade on from Southampton replacing Nigel Adkins with Mauricio Pochettino, when the club dumped the double-edged news in an ice-cold statement, Bournemouth informed Gary O’Neil he was no longer their manager and promptly – well, just two and a half hours later – named Andoni Iraola as his successor.

Southampton were lampooned for dismissing Adkins, accused of disrespecting a manager who had taken the club off the canvas in League One and to the bright lights of the Premier League, via successive promotions, and of, frankly, making a ludicrous decision. O’Neil’s journey at Bournemouth, whom he joined as a first-team coach under Jonathan Woodgate in February 2021, was a more rocky reign but the job he did to avoid relegation with a degree of comfort this season rightly put him in the conversation for manager of the season.

Only that seemingly absurd decision to part with Adkins, a man who would often describe the room for improvement as the biggest in his house, and appoint Pochettino, a suave Argentinian, did not turn out too bad. He steered Saints to safety in style, from the moment he secured his first win against the then champions Manchester City, and led the club to eighth in his only full season, paving the way for a move to Tottenham. The grand stages of Paris Saint-Germain and Chelsea have since come calling.

It was Ralph Hasenhüttl, who would later sit in Pochettino’s old seat in the St Mary’s dugout, who said if a club wanted a guarantee then they should buy a washing machine. That line of thinking applies here, as Bournemouth attempt to effectively upgrade a