Gary O’Neil and Russell Martin were both sacked on the same day
Emlyn Begley
BBC Sport journalist
Two of the clubs in the Premier League decided to roll the dice on Sunday by sacking their managers.
Southampton, nine points adrift and bottom, axed Russell Martin – the manager who got them promoted last season.
Wolves, five points off safety, sacked Gary O’Neil after a season and a half in charge.
But does sacking a manager help to bring about survival when a team are in the relegation zone?
Is there hope for Wolves?
Wolves and Southampton are the Premier League’s bottom two teams
Not counting this season, there have been 91 times when a team have parted company with their manager while in the drop zone – and on 36 of those occasions they avoided relegation.
That is a success rate of 40%, so we know the difficult decision can work.
Of those 36 cases, five of the teams were exactly five points adrift when the manager left, like Wolves.
Sam Allardyce kept up two of those five teams – Blackburn in 2008-09 and Sunderland in 2015-16.
Tony Parkes, as a caretaker, saved Blackburn from such a perilous position in 1996-97, while Harry Redknapp saw Tottenham to safety in 2008-09.
Tony Pulis helped Crystal Palace avoid the drop in 2013-14, although by the time he took over from caretaker Keith Millen they were only three points off safety.
Only one of those five instances happened this late in a season, though – when Blackburn sacked Paul Ince on 16 December 2008 and hired Allardyce two days later.
The other four changes with teams five points adrift all happened in October.
One good omen for Wolves is that they were the second most recent team who changed managers while in the bottom three and stayed up.
That was when Julen Lopetegui replaced Bruno Lage – via Steve Davis’ caretaker spell – just before the 2022 World Cup.
Is there any hope for Southampton?
Um…
No team have ever had a change of manager when nine points adrift (or anything more than five points) and stayed up.
In fact, only two teams have ever stayed up after being nine points or more from safety at any stage of the season.
They are Blackburn in 1996-97 – a week or so after Parkes replaced Ray Harford – and West Ham in 2006-07.
The Hammers, who replaced Alan Pardew with Alan Curbishley earlier that season, were 10 points adrift with nine games to go – but they won seven of those to stay up.
Changing manager while in the drop zone has worked for Southampton three times – when Ian Branfoot left in 1993-94, Stuart Gray left in 2001-02 and Mark Hughes exited in 2018-19.
But the tactic failed for them twice in 2022-23 when first Ralph Hasenhuttl in November and then Nathan Jones in February left.
But in none of those instances were they in this big of a mess.
We also now know Southampton will be bottom of the table at Christmas – with only four previous teams having survived from that position in Premier League history.
West Bromwich Albion (2004-05), Sunderland (2013-14), Leicester (2014-15) and Wolves (2022-23) are the four sides to manage it.
Have recent changes worked?
Looking more recently – in the five seasons previous to this campaign, 16 teams parted company with their manager while in the relegation zone. Only five of them stayed up.
Last season the same three teams spent most of the season in the bottom three – Burnley, Luton and Sheffield United.
The Blades changed manager but the other two did not – and they all went down.
Relegation-zone managerial changes in the previous five seasons
| Team | Manager replaced | Season | Did the team stay up? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Watford | Javier Gracia | 2019-20 | No |
| Watford | Quique Sanchez Flores | 2019-20 | No |
| Everton | Marco Silva | 2019-20 | Yes |
| West Brom | Slaven Bilic | 2020-21 | No |
| Sheff Utd | Chris Wilder | 2020-21 | No |
| Newcastle | Steve Bruce | 2021-22 | Yes |
| Norwich | Daniel Farke | 2021-22 | No |
| Watford | Claudio Ranieri | 2021-22 | No |
| Burnley | Sean Dyche | 2021-22 | No |
| Bournemouth | Scott Parker | 2022-23 | Yes |
| Wolves | Bruno Lage | 2022-23 | Yes |
| Southampton | Ralph Hasenhuttl | 2022-23 | No |
| Everton | Frank Lampard | 2022-23 | Yes |
| Southampton | Nathan Jones | 2022-23 | No |
| Leicester | Brendan Rodgers | 2022-23 | No |
| Sheff Utd | Paul Heckingbottom | 2023-24 | No |
Source: Opta
