Arsène Wenger has been the manager at Arsenal since October 1996. The amazing thing is that second place on the Premier League managerial tenure list goes to Mark Hughes, who has been in charge at Stoke City for just four seasons. Eight Premier League managers have been in charge for less than a year.
It's a sign of the times. With the exception of a few comfortable chairs such as Wenger's, today's managers at the top level begin their jobs already on the hot seat.
The chief conductors of the managerial carousel these days might be the Pozzo family, which owns Watford in the Premier League and Udinese in Serie A. Since taking over Watford, the Hornets have had seven managers in six years, including an astonishing four different managers in a span of 37 days. At Udinese, the Pozzos have averaged one manager per year for nearly three decades, and twice managed the feat of having four managers in a single calendar year.
Everyone loves to jump on owners for being too quick to fire managers, but lately, it seems like the quick are better off than the patient. Leicester City fired Claudio Ranieri less than one season after he won an improbable league title. Replacement Craig Shakespeare immediately turned things around and took Leicester away from the relegation battle and into the Champions League quarterfinals.
Paul Clement, Swansea's third manager of the year, only took over at the beginning of January, but he immediately drove his team out of the ditch and all the way to safety from relegation, finishing with four victories in five games to claim 15th. At Chelsea, Antonio Conte took just one season to lift Chelsea from disaster back to the league title.
Even the Pozzos, with their managerial itch to dismiss, have found success. Watford had been relegated in its two previous Premier League tries. Now in the Pozzo fold, the club's next season will be its third consecutive in the top flight. Udinese hasn't been relegated in 20 years, and has regularly competed for Champions League spots despite having none of the advantages of other storied Italian sides.
At the top of the European leagues, the era in which a manager might have a long grace period to build a club in his own image seems to be all but over. Today, the responsibility for acquiring players and setting team direction falls more to owners, who tend to be far richer and more hands-on than in the past.
Meanwhile, managers come and go more often than star players do. Time is an unaffordable luxury for most of the men who patrol the sidelines. It's win now or look for another job. While it seems counter-intuitive, more often than not, the quick firing seems to be the right move.
