Goodbye Thomas Frank. Farewell Sean Dyche.
Welcome Igor Tudor. Welcome (back) Vitor Pereira.
The football world never stands still, and last week was no exception. Courtesy of Tottenham and Nottingham Forest, the seventh and eighth Premier League managers left their posts this season, and were replaced by shiny, new replacements.
That got us thinking about the impact of changing manager mid-season. So, in SVQ this week, we’ve dug into whether the famous ‘new manager bounce’ is actually real. Do teams really get an immediate boost from making a change in the dugout?
We’ve also visualised 500 goals from one of the game’s finest ever strikers, and answered an Ask Opta question that should make a few promotion-chasing fans feel very uncomfortable.
And as always, there’s a five-question quiz for you to get stuck into, so let’s get going.
📈 STAT - New Manager Bounce?
New year, new manager. It’s already been a brutal start to 2026 for incumbent Premier League bosses, with four permanent managers dismissed before mid-February. The two most recent casualties came last week, with Tottenham parting ways with Thomas Frank and Nottingham Forest sacking Sean Dyche.
With both sides flirting dangerously with the relegation zone, the hope is that making a change will lead to the holy grail: the proverbial ‘new manager bounce’.
One need to only look at the two other clubs who’ve changed managers since the start of January to see the benefits of what could happen.
Both Chelsea and Manchester United have seen an immediate improvement in results under their new managers, with Liam Rosenior and Michael Carrick each averaging 2.6 points per game so far. That’s a significant upgrade on the points-per-game rate of their teams prior to their appointments (1.47 and 1.52, respectively).
But can we say with any certainty that the new manager bounce is actually a thing? For every Carrick, there is an Ivan Juric at Southampton from 2024-25.