Should he stay, or should he go?

The top secret mystery Top 100 Selection Panel has been carefully considering and voting on which of this season’s sacked managers will be re-appointed, and which ones will stay sacked (although they may re-apply when the job is opened up for applications in the usual way).

It’s a couple of years since we increased the number of managers who get sacked in each division from two to three (the maximum allowed in the game world admin settings).

New managers re-appointed

This season, as is usual, we come to the end of the season with several clubs who appointed new managers during the course of the season looking certain or likely to finish in the bottom three. These managers will all be re-appointed, as is the custom.

So that’s Spurs, Wolfsburg, Shakhtar, Malaga, Montpellier and Bordeaux whose managers will be re-appointed (should they finish in the bottom three and be sacked – Spurs and Shakhtar could still avoid that scenario).

In addition, Leicester will re-appoint Doug Earle should he fail to avoid the bottom three. I agreed with Doug when he left Arsenal that he could rebuild and keep his job if relegated.

That’s as many as seven of the fifteen who will end up in the bottom three who will be re-appointed.

Clubs definitely available

Manchester United, Basel and Lazio currently have caretaker managers, and Besiktas and Olympiacos will soon be available when Ken and Alex go to the two Manchester clubs (Mark is leaving City at the end of the season).

There may be other clubs that become available – there usually are, but the clubs currently definitely available at the end of the season for applications from managers already in Top 100 are:

• D2 Lazio
• Newly relegated to D3 Basel
• D4 playoff hopefuls Besiktas
• Youth Shield Finalists, D5 Olympiacos

So we will have at least twelve clubs whose managers quit at some point this season – D1 Man City and Spurs, D2 Lazio and Basel, D3 Man Utd, Wolfsburg and Shakhtar, D4 Besiktas, Malaga and Montpellier, and D5 Olympiacos and Bordeaux.

We have up to seven out of fifteen sacked managers who will be re-appointed as explained above.

Sackings to be decided…

That leaves us with twelve managers still sweating on the panel’s decision and/or hoping to avoid the sack all together on the final match day on Thursday night:

• D1 Ajax, Benfica, and possibly Hellas Verona
• D2 CSKA Moskva and Napoli
• D3 one or both of Lille and Celta Vigo
• D4 possibly one of Internazionale or Lokomotiv Moskva
• D5 Independiente, Saint-Etienne, and possibly Sao Paulo

By my reckoning that’s a minimum of seven, and a maximum of eleven clubs, who could end up sacking their managers.

I posted on the newsfeed a couple of weeks ago (and bumped the post back to the top several times) asking managers to let me know what they wanted to happen if they got sacked, and I passed their messages on to the selection panel to help them decide. I added some of my own comments where I felt that was relevant.

Any sacked manager who isn’t re-appointed by the panel can still re-apply via the usual application process when the job is advertised. We will try to ensure that any sacked manager who wants to stay in Top 100 gets another club, if they don’t get re-appointed, but they may have to spend some time on our Waiting List, depending on which clubs are available and what they are willing to take.