The all important and much anticipated first managerial casualty of the EPL season has been confirmed this week as Crystal Palace sack Frank de Boer after 4 games.
That’s not four games into a new season with the same club, it is four games into a new partnership with the South London based club.
Just four games. Not long at all, and they said they lost faith some time ago, making that period seem even shorter.
One has to question why they bothered in the first place, given the players had trouble adapting to the new style of Frank de Boer. Even stick with him, or wonder why they bothered in the first place.
The decision to sack Frank de Boer after 4 games is probably the right one, they are without a point or a goal after four games, but this time they don’t have an un-relegatable Sam Allardyce or Toy Pulis ready to jump in. The word on the street is former England manager Roy Hodgson, who may be fine as long it is a knockout stage of an international tournament.
We should point out that he did beat the youngest Ipswich Town team ever put on a park in the second round of the League Cup.
But is Frank de Boer’s sacking at Crystal Palace the shortest in history? As ever we have a few contenders and a few favourites to nominate in our great moments of Coach/Manager sacking in Sport.
LEROY ROSENIOR
The shortest stint in English Football, and hard to beleive this will ever be topped, as he lasted just 10 minutes as manager at Torquay.
A Guardian article here sheds more light, but in short he was named as Manager on his return to the club has took to promotion in an earlier stint, and his appointment coincided with an ownership change who promptly dismissed Rosenior ten minutes after the club had hired him.
BRIAN CLOUGH
One of English Football’s best managers, who did a Leicester with Nottingham Forest back in the 1970’s had a stint with Leeds United that was documented in the movie The Damned United.
His stint lasted 44 days and saw just 8 games, one win and four draws the return.
Coincidentally, he was sacked on this very day in 1973.
CRAIG COLEMAN
The South Sydney halfback turned coach of the side in two stints from 1998 to 1999 and in 2002. The first of these stints were the more successful, as just five wins from 24 games came in 2002.
He was meant to continue and improve in 2003 but never got the chance as he was given the flick before the season even started after poor pre season form. Creating a decent record to be beaten – getting the flick before the season started.
They replaced him with Supercoach Paul Langmack, a decision Souths lived to regret for a long time.
ANDREA SASSETTI – ANDREA MODA F1
The Italian Andrea Sassetti had his own F1 team in 1992 after buying a former back of the grid team with grand plans to turn it into a world beater.
With a catalogue of disasters and hopelessness during the 1992 season, the final straw was when the owner was arrested at one of the Grands Prix. The governing body FIA kicked out the entire team, and wiped them from F1 History by not including them in their Season Review.
SACKING IS NOT ALWAYS THE ANSWER
A lot of football teams get a new manager bounce but ultimately finish the season no better off. And in fact in a lot cases they end up worse if they do it too early in the season.
One case that is an exception is Watford.
In their year of promotion in 2014-2015 the Hornets had four different managers in the one season. Not a bad effort even for the Championship division that has an average tenure of less than a year.
The shortest of the four manager stints was Billy McKinlay who lasted for just two games. He was the third manager for the year. His predecessor lasted just four games.
In the end though Watford got promoted to the EPL despite all the turnover, and have been there ever since, celebrating safety each year by removing the current manager.
