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The vast majority of leagues around the world right now are on the home stretch for the end of the season. Relegation battles are heating up, the Champions League and Europa League are at the pointy end of things and some leagues (Premier League and La Liga, we’re looking at you) are pretty much wrapped up at the top of the table.
Despite some owners and managers settling for mid-table mediocrity or a respectable top-half finish, others will not. Here are some managers that you can bet your bottom dollar will be coming to an unemployment line near you.
Antonio Conte has often cut a frustrated figure on the sidelines.
What started as a beautiful Italian romance at Stamford Bridge has now turned into a potentially ugly divorce. Conte managed to win the Premier League in his first season as Chelsea manager, but with the added pressure of Europe this season, he has failed miserably to replicate the heights of last year. With a trigger-happy owner in Roman Abramovich, don’t be surprised when Chelsea part ways with the Italian at the end of the season.
Ziganda reacts to a missed chance.
It was always going to be hard to follow in the footsteps of Ernesto Valverde, who managed to steer the club to an admirable seventh-place finish in La Liga last season and subsequently earned himself the gig at Barcelona.
Ziganda, at the moment, has Bilbao in 12th place on 36 points with eight games to play, and while they may have lost center back Aymeric Laporte to Manchester City halfway through the season, they have struggled to replicate similar performances from last season with virtually the same squad. Ziganda is most certainly one who is in the firing line.
Steve Bruce in the dugout at Villa Park
Many of the pre-season predictions for the Championship had Aston Villa all set to achieve automatic promotion, but with a few games remaining in the regular season, they sit in fourth place. This potential departure heavily depends on how Villa do in the playoffs, as it seems that they are destined for that fate come the end of the season.
Bruce has one of, if not the most expensive squads in the history of the Championship, and must deliver for the claret and blues. The patience of the Villa fans is running thin, and anything less than promotion this season will see Bruce kicked to the curb.
Unai Emery in a Champions League press conference.
“But PSG are leading Ligue 1!” you may cry, but with the amount of money that the club splashed on Neymar at the start of the season, they expected to do way more than just win the league.
A humiliating exit last season in the Champions League to Barcelona (they lost 6-1 at the Camp Nou, if you needed a refresher) and then losing to Real Madrid in the Round of 16 this year saw the club licking their wounds in the Champions League yet again. Emery didn’t win Ligue 1 last season, losing to Monaco, so you’d have to expect that he won’t be gracing the sidelines of the Parc des Princes come the start of the 2018-19 Ligue 1 season.
