When is sacking season in the Premier League?

The Premier League is a cut-throat business for managers. One month has passed since Arsenal and Crystal Palace kicked off the new season and two managers have already bitten the dust. Scott Parker was the first managerial casualty when his gloomy assessment of Bournemouth’s survival hopes was too close to the bone for the club’s board. Thomas Tuchel soon followed after the new Chelsea owners decided it was “the right time to make this transition”.

It’s the earliest date that two Premier League managers have been sacked since the 2008-09 season and, with talk of unrest surrounding Brendan Rodgers at Leicester and Steven Gerrard at Aston Villa, that trend shows no sign of abating. If anything, the chaos only seems to have continued from last season.

When Ole Gunnar Solskjær was shown the door at Old Trafford on 21 November, he became the sixth Premier League manager to leave his post last season – a new record in the English top flight. You wouldn’t bet against that being gazumped this year. It’s called sacking season. The time of year when coaches lose their jobs nearly as readily as the leaves are dropping off the trees, although it seems to have come early this year.

While it’s easy to look at the past two seasons and assume there is no safe time for Premier League managers anymore, the reality is that ousting bosses early in a campaign is nothing new. Tuchel’s sacking on 7 September ranks as only the third earliest time for two managers to leave their posts since the Premier League began. In the 2008-09 season, Alan Curbishley left West Ham and Kevin Keegan departed Newcastle by 4 September. Clubs were even more impatient in 2004-05, when Paul Sturrock and Bobby Robson were shown the door from Southampton and