So far there have been nine managerial changes in the Premier League this season while at least two more clubs will change coaches at the end of the campaign. The average tenure for a manager across the top four divisions of English football is one year and nine months.
By contrast, Prem Rugby is a relatively safe space for coaches, however much their teams underperform.
In the past three seasons, only two No 1s have been effectively fired: Steve Diamond at the start of this campaign by Newcastle Red Bulls and Dan McKellar, given the chop by Leicester in 2024. Other coaches may have jumped to more attractive destinations such as Michael Cheika and Danny Wilson, but very few have been pushed.
A cursory look underneath the social media posts announcing Gloucester, Harlequins and Sale’s recent results suggests a ferocious appetite for change among the online fandom community, but this impulse is not shared by club owners. There is no indication that Alex Sanderson, for instance, is under immediate pressure at Sale Sharks despite their already desperately disappointing season hitting a new low with a 85-19 defeat by Saracens on Sunday.
“I’m confident I can take them forward, one hundred per cent I can,” Sanderson said. “If I felt like I was losing the group then that’s a different question – I would just walk. But at the moment internally we’re very tight and we feel like we’ve got the answers moving forward.”
So why do rugby union owners lack the itchy trigger finger of their football counterparts? To start with, the stakes in the Prem are far lower than in the Premier League, both at the top and bottom. Fear of relegation has caused Nottingham Forest and Tottenham Hotspur to change their managers twice this season. For better or worse, that trap door does not exist in the Prem. Nor does the same race to qualify for Champions League, which is hard-baked into many of the big football clubs’ financial calculations, with the top eight clubs going straight into the Champions Cup.
This reduces the need for a Sean Dyche-style firefighter to save a season and enables clubs to take a longer-term view. Should Sanderson, for example, be judged on this wretched season or the previous three campaigns in which Sale made the top four?
This time last year, it was Exeter who were Prem Rugby’s crisis club, finishing in ninth place, but Rob Baxter was rightly given the time he needed to make changes in his set-up to create Chiefs 2.0. George Skivington and Jason Gilmore have also been supported to the hilt at Gloucester and Harlequins respectively, revamping their own coaching staffs and bringing in Chris Boyd and Robbie Deans as a couple of wise old greybeards.