Five Premier League managers sacked in 2022/23 returning in 2023/24

Gone but by no means forgotten, these managers sacked by Premier League clubs in 2022/23 will be on radars, if not now then at some point, in 2023/24, because scouting is tiring and it’s nice to see the same old faces.

Here’s how they all fared in the season rankings, with three of them in the top ten managers currently available…

Graham Potter
There’s nothing like being replaced at a club by someone entirely incapable to restore your tarnished reputation. Potter’s stint at Chelsea doesn’t look half-bad after Frank Lampard went in and dug well past the club’s rock bottom towards the earth’s core.

A near-impossible job even for someone with actual big club experience, Potter was doomed to fail at Stamford Bridge, where no pre-season and £272.5m-worth of summer signings provided quite the challenge, before a further £296.3m spend in January ensured his demise.

The owners were (reasonably) concerned by some odd team selections and in-game decisions from a supposedly brilliant tactician, but Chelsea’s football wasn’t all that bad for the majority of his reign and, obvious caveat though it is, spending even 10% of their outlay on a goalscorer would probably have seen Potter through the season at least.

Reports suggest Palace are keen and that feels like a lovely fit, though to prevent the xG curse following Potter to Selhurst Park as it did from the Amex to Stamford Bridge, Steve Parish should be on the lookout for a greater goal threat than Odsonne Edouard and Jean-Philippe Mateta.

Brendan Rodgers
If a Premier League club wants two very good seasons from a manager – and let’s face it that’s quite the stint these days – Rodgers is the man.

He took Liverpool from eighth to the brink of the title, and he won the FA Cup with Leicester and led them to two fifth-placed finishes having taken the helm with the Foxes in the bottom half.

That said, anyone offering him longer than a two-year contract needs their head examining as Liverpool finished with 22 fewer points in his third campaign and a third full season at the King Power Stadium ended in relegation for Leicester.

He remains towards the top of Tottenham’s list.

Patrick Vieira
Surprise at Vieira’s sacking in March seemed to come mainly from outside the Palace fanbase, who had seen their club score five goals in 12 games since the turn of the year and pick up just five points.

But 11 of those 12 games came against teams that finished in the top nine, with Chelsea the 12th, and that significant caveat was spread far and wide by pundits questioning Palace’s call to show Vieira the door, and remained even as Roy Hodgson returned to win three on the bounce, scoring nine in the process. ‘Vieira could have done that, if given the chance,’ was the line about the man just below Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard in the media darling stakes.

But unlike Gerrard and Lampard, Vieira’s flush remains unbusted. He banked enough credit in his first season-and-half at Palace, in which they played attractive, and reasonably effective, football, to outweigh any negativity (not that there has been a great deal) as a result of the horrific run of results in 2023.

Ralph Hasenhuttl
Sick of circling the Premier League drain under Hasenhuttl, who led the Saints to 16th, 11th, 15th and 15th in his four seasons at St Mary’s, the Southampton bosses sacked the Austrian in November and got their wish: they are no longer circling the Premier League drain.

We’re still not clear whether Hasenhuttl’s a good manager or not. We know he’s better than Nathan Jones and Ruben Selles but frankly, who isn’t? There were times during Hasenhuttl’s time at Southampton when he was being tipped for far bigger jobs; likened to Jurgen Klopp. But there were others when it looked as though anyone shaken out of the manager tree could have been doing a better job.

But it only takes one Premier League club to come down on the side of him being a bit of a genius who somehow staved off relegation for quite a sh*t Southampton side rather than believing he played a pivotal part in their consistent flirtation with it, for Hasenhuttl to be back in the big time next year.

Jesse Marsch
The 0.9 Points Per Match won under Marsch this season would technically have been enough to keep Leeds in the Premier League had he not been sacked in February, and he retains admirers despite that dismissal.

Southampton came very close to hiring him after Jones before a dispute over the length of his contract, and Leicester held talks before they plumped for Dean Smith. He could still end up at those two relegated sides having indicated he would be willing to drop down to the Championship to fight for an immediate yo-yo, but he could just as easily wait until September when the first top-flight job inevitably becomes available.

Leeds’ relegation feels as though it is more on the club than Marsch, who has that ‘something about him’ quality that clubs will feel is worth betting on.