Hiring and Firing vs Giving a Coach Time - What's More Effective?
On the same day this week, two Premier League clubs made headlines for the same reason: sacking their manager. Tottenham dismissed Thomas Frank after eight months. Nottingham Forest fired Sean Dyche after 114 days. For Forest, Dyche was their third head coach of the season. They are now searching for their fourth.
Meanwhile, across London, Mikel Arteta is in his sixth year at Arsenal, has spent over £700 million on transfers and has transformed the club from mid-table mediocrity into perennial title challengers. In Madrid, Diego Simeone has been in charge of Atletico since December 2011, over 14 years and 700 matches and has won two La Liga titles, two Europa Leagues and reached two Champions League finals. In the Bundesliga, Frank Schmidt has managed his hometown club Heidenheim since 2007, guiding them from the fifth tier of German football to the top flight, European competition and a match against Chelsea all with the same man in the dugout for 18 years.
These are not just interesting contrasts. They represent the fundamental philosophical divide in football management: is it more effective to hire and fire in pursuit of short-term results, or to invest in a coach and give them the time to build something lasting?
For football coaches, this is not an abstract debate. It shapes careers, defines opportunities and determines whether the work you do on the training ground ever has a chance to bear fruit. Here is what the evidence tells us.
The Hiring and Firing Model: Chelsea, Forest and the Pursuit of Instant Results
No club in modern football embodies the hire-and-fire approach more than Chelsea. Since Roman Abramovich took over in 2003, the club has employed over 15 permanent managers an average tenure of roughly 18 months. Under Todd Boehly's ownership, the pace has accelerated further. Mauricio Pochettino lasted one season. Enzo Maresca departed by mutual consent earlier this season. Liam Rosenior, appointed in January 2026 from within the club's multi-club ownership model, is now the latest man tasked with making it work.
The remarkable thing about Chelsea's approach is that, for a long time, it actually delivered results. Under Abramovich, the constant churn produced five Premier League titles, two Champions League trophies, two Europa Leagues and countless domestic cups. The logic was brutally simple: hire a world-class coach, give them resources, demand immediate success, and if they falter, replace them before the decline takes hold. Jose Mourinho won back-to-back titles in his first spell. Carlo Ancelotti delivered a league and cup double in his debut season. Antonio Conte won the league and then the FA Cup. Even Roberto Di Matteo, promoted from assistant to interim, somehow won the Champions League.
But there is a critical distinction between Chelsea's model under Abramovich and the hire-and-fire approach in general. Abramovich's Chelsea was backed by virtually unlimited resources, a squad stacked with world-class talent and a boardroom that for all its impatience, was ruthlessly competent at identifying the next appointment. The carousel worked not because constant change is inherently effective, but because the club had the financial power and recruitment infrastructure to absorb the disruption.
Strip away those advantages, and the hire-and-fire model looks far less convincing.
Nottingham Forest: A Cautionary Tale in Real Time
Forest's 2025-26 season is the most extreme example of managerial instability in Premier League history. They began the campaign with Nuno Espirito Santo, the popular Portuguese coach who had led them to Europa League qualification the previous season, their first European campaign since 1995. Nuno lasted three league games before a breakdown in his relationship with owner Evangelos Marinakis saw him dismissed.
His replacement, Ange Postecoglou, fresh from winning the Europa League with Tottenham, lasted just 39 days, the shortest permanent managerial tenure in Premier League history. He lost six of his eight matches and was gone before most fans had learned to pronounce his name.
Sean Dyche arrived in October and made a strong initial impact, including a memorable 3-0 win at Anfield and progression in the Europa League. But a dip in form and a goalless draw against bottom-placed Wolves in which Forest managed 35 shots without scoring proved terminal. He was sacked after 114 days, despite a 40% win rate that was actually better than either of his predecessors this season.
Forest are now 17th, three points above the relegation zone and looking for their fourth manager. Each new appointment has brought a different tactical approach, a different set of principles, a different set of preferences for personnel. The players have had to adapt to three entirely different coaching philosophies in five months. The disruption to training patterns, tactical preparation, squad harmony and psychological stability has been immense.
The evidence from Forest and from the broader history of mid-season managerial changes is that constant disruption almost never produces sustainable improvement. It may generate a brief "bounce" in results, but the long-term effect is usually destabilising.
Manchester United: The Post-Ferguson Wilderness
Perhaps the most instructive example of the hire-and-fire approach failing at scale is Manchester United since Sir Alex Ferguson's retirement in 2013. In the 13 years since, United have employed David Moyes (10 months), Louis van Gaal (two years), Jose Mourinho (two-and-a-half years), Ole Gunnar Solskjaer (three years), Ralf Rangnick (interim), Erik ten Hag (two-and-a-half years) and Ruben Amorim (14 months). Each brought a different philosophy, different tactical framework and different set of transfer targets.
The result is a squad assembled by committee, a patchwork of players signed by different managers for different systems, many of whom do not complement each other. Amorim, who insisted on a 3-4-3 formation in 45 of his 47 Premier League matches, used 25 different centre-back partnerships because he could never find the right combination from a squad built for other systems. He left the club just three points off the top four, having shown genuine improvement in his second season, but was sacked before his ideas could fully take root.
United's post-Ferguson era is the ultimate argument against impatience. No single manager has been given the time, resources and structural alignment to build a coherent long-term project. Each new appointment inherits the debris of the last one and adds their own layer of complexity. The club has spent over £2 billion on transfers in this period and has less to show for it than Arsenal, who spent roughly a third of that under a single manager.
The Patience Model: Arsenal, Atletico and Heidenheim
Arsenal: Trust the Process
The counter-example that every advocate of patience points to is Mikel Arteta's Arsenal.
When Arteta was appointed in December 2019, he inherited a club in disarray. Arsenal were tenth in the table, the squad was unbalanced and overpaid, the fanbase was disillusioned and the identity that had defined the club under Arsene Wenger had evaporated. Arteta was a rookie head coach with no prior managerial experience — just three-and-a-half years as Pep Guardiola's assistant at Manchester City.
His first full season was painful. Arsenal finished eighth. The following season, they finished eighth again. At Christmas 2020, they sat 15th in the Premier League with 14 points from 14 games. The football was stale, predictable and uninspiring. By any reasonable short-term metric, Arteta should have been sacked.
But Arsenal's hierarchy, led by technical director Edu and backed by the Kroenke ownership chose patience. They believed in the direction of travel, even when the results did not yet reflect it. Crucially, they also gave Arteta the tools to execute his vision: Ben White, Martin Odegaard, Aaron Ramsdale and a wave of young, hungry players who fit the profile he wanted.
The transformation has been extraordinary. Back-to-back eighth-place finishes gave way to fifth, then two consecutive title challenges that produced 84 and 89 points respectively, Arsenal's best Premier League totals in the modern era, surpassing even the Invincibles. Arteta has built one of the most tactically sophisticated, defensively robust and creatively dynamic teams in European football. The set-piece revolution alone, from scoring the third-fewest dead-ball goals in the league to the most is a masterclass in marginal gains.
For coaches, the Arteta story illustrates a critical truth: meaningful transformation takes time. The tactical principles Arteta wanted to embed the structured build-up, the positional play, the aggressive pressing triggers required not just coaching, but a complete overhaul of personnel, culture and mentality. That process took three transfer windows and two full seasons before the results began to match the ambition. Had Arsenal pulled the trigger at Christmas 2020, as many fans demanded, none of it would have happened.
Atletico Madrid: Simeone's 14-Year Transformation
If Arteta's Arsenal is the modern textbook case for patience, Diego Simeone's Atletico Madrid is the masterwork.
When Simeone took charge in December 2011, Atletico were tenth in La Liga, had just been knocked out of the Copa del Rey by third-tier Albacete and were miles behind Real Madrid and Barcelona. Within 18 months, he had won the Copa del Rey. Within three years, he had won La Liga ending a duopoly that had seemed unbreakable and reached the Champions League final.
Over 14 years and more than 700 matches, Simeone has won eight major trophies and transformed Atletico from perennial underdogs into one of the most feared clubs in European football. His record of 306 wins, 112 draws and 82 defeats in La Liga is remarkable. The club has finished in the top three in every full season under his command and played in the Champions League for nine consecutive years.
What makes Simeone's tenure so instructive for coaches is not just the trophies, but the cultural transformation. He inherited a squad lacking belief, identity and competitive edge. He built a culture of intensity, sacrifice and collective commitment that has survived the departure of virtually every key player from his early years Diego Godin, Gabi, Koke's prime years, Diego Costa, Antoine Griezmann. Each departure was absorbed because the identity transcended any individual. The system, the culture and the mentality were bigger than any player.
Simeone also demonstrates that long-term tenure does not mean stagnation. His tactical approach has evolved significantly from the rigid 4-4-2 of the early years to more possession-oriented systems when the squad profile changed. He has adapted, iterated and modernised while maintaining the core principles that define his teams. That balance between consistency and evolution is the hallmark of truly great long-term coaching.
Heidenheim: The Fairytale That Patience Built
Frank Schmidt's story at Heidenheim is perhaps the purest example of what happens when a club commits fully to a coach's vision with no asterisks, no caveats and no time limits.
Schmidt was appointed as a two-week interim in September 2007, when Heidenheim were in the fifth tier of German football. He is still there 18 years later, having guided the club through four promotions to the Bundesliga a journey unprecedented in modern German football. Only RB Leipzig, backed by Red Bull's billions, have made the same fifth-tier-to-top-flight leap this century.
Heidenheim is a town of 50,000 people. Their stadium holds 15,000. Their budget is a fraction of the Bundesliga's established clubs. Yet under Schmidt, they finished eighth in their debut top-flight season, qualified for the Europa Conference League, beat Bayern Munich and welcomed Chelsea to their ground for a competitive European fixture.
Schmidt's approach is built on deep local knowledge, relentless man-management and a tactical pragmatism that maximises every available resource. His players describe him as someone who knows exactly how to communicate with each individual. Jan-Niklas Beste, who joined from Werder Bremen, said he had never experienced such positive, direct communication from a coach. Former striker Florian Niederlechner called Schmidt "an incredible person" who "knows how to talk to his players."
The continuity at Heidenheim extends beyond the coaching staff. Club president Holger Sanwald has been in place throughout Schmidt's tenure. The alignment between coach, boardroom and community is total. There is no tension between short-term results and long-term vision because everyone is working towards the same goal, on the same timeline.
Schmidt himself has spoken candidly about his longevity: "My whole life is about continuity. I'm still with my first girlfriend. It just fits." It is a simplicity that feels almost radical in a sport obsessed with change.
The Data: What Does the Evidence Say?
The anecdotal cases are compelling, but what does the broader data tell us about the effectiveness of each approach?
A 2020 Sky Sports study found that the average tenure for departing Premier League managers had fallen to an all-time low of 423 days. As of 2025-26, the average tenure of current Premier League managers is approximately 747 days, but remove Pep Guardiola's nine-year outlier at Manchester City and the figure drops to just 611 days, barely 20 months.
Research consistently shows that the "new manager bounce", the temporary improvement in results that often follows a managerial change is real but short-lived. A study published in the Journal of Sports Economics found that while teams often improve in the immediate aftermath of a sacking, the effect typically dissipates within eight to ten matches, after which results revert to a level consistent with the squad's underlying quality.
In other words, sacking a manager rarely changes the trajectory of a season. What it does change is the atmosphere the psychology of the dressing room, the energy on the training ground, the mood in the stands. But without underlying structural improvement better recruitment, better coaching infrastructure, better tactical clarity the new manager is usually dealing with the same problems as the old one.
The clubs that have achieved sustained success in the modern era almost universally share one characteristic: coaching stability. Guardiola's Manchester City. Klopp's Liverpool. Arteta's Arsenal. Simeone's Atletico. Schmidt's Heidenheim. Christian Streich's 12-year tenure at Freiburg. Gian Piero Gasperini's transformative eight years at Atalanta. Each case involved a club backing a coach through difficult periods, providing the resources and time to implement a vision, and resisting the urge to react to short-term results.
The Pros and Cons: A Coaching Perspective
The Case for Giving Coaches Time
Identity and culture take time to build. A tactical system is not just a formation on a whiteboard. It requires players to internalise movement patterns, pressing triggers, spatial relationships and decision-making frameworks. This takes months of repetition on the training ground and competitive matches to embed. Changing managers every few months means starting from scratch each time.
Recruitment becomes coherent. When a single coach is in place for multiple transfer windows, they can build a squad that fits their vision. Arteta's Arsenal is the perfect example, each successive window added players that complemented each other and fit the tactical framework. Contrast this with Manchester United, where players signed for Mourinho sit alongside those signed for Ten Hag and Amorim, many of whom are incompatible.
Young players develop better under stability. Development requires trust, patience and consistent messaging. Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli and William Saliba all blossomed under Arteta because they were given time to grow within a stable environment. Constant managerial change disrupts development pathways and creates uncertainty for young players about their future.
It sends a message to the market. When a club is known for backing its coaches, it attracts a different calibre of candidate. Top coaches want to go where they will be given time to work. The constant-sacking model attracts coaches who are willing to accept instability, which is not always the same as the best coaches available.
The Case for Changing When Necessary
Sometimes the fit is simply wrong. Not every appointment works out, and persisting with a coach who has clearly lost the dressing room, as Frank appeared to at Tottenham can do more harm than the disruption of a change. There is a difference between patience and stubbornness.
The relegation imperative. For clubs in a relegation fight, the luxury of long-term thinking may not exist. Survival is an existential priority that can justify short-term decisions. Forest's situation chaotic as it is reflects a genuine desperation to avoid the financial catastrophe of dropping out of the Premier League.
Fresh ideas can unlock a squad. A new coach can sometimes see solutions that their predecessor could not. Different tactical approaches, different training methods, different ways of communicating can revitalise a group that has gone stale. The key is whether the change is strategic or panicked.
Chelsea's trophies are real. For all the criticism of their approach, Chelsea have won more major trophies since 2003 than any English club except Manchester City. The carousel has come at a cost — cultural instability, inconsistent identity, player confusion but the silverware is tangible. The question is whether this model is replicable without the extraordinary financial resources that underpinned it.
The Middle Ground: Strategic Change vs Reactive Panic
The most important distinction in this debate is not between "patience" and "change", it is between strategic decisions and reactive ones.
Strategic change means recognising that an appointment has not worked for clear, evidence-based reasons, and making a carefully planned transition to a coach who addresses the specific problems identified. This is what Arsenal did when they moved from Unai Emery to Arteta, a deliberate decision to pivot from experience to potential, with a clear long-term vision attached.
Reactive panic means sacking a coach because of a bad run of results, without a clear plan for what comes next or who the replacement should be. This is what Forest have done three times this season, each dismissal driven by short-term form rather than a coherent strategic assessment of what the club needs.
The best-run clubs in world football operate with a clear coaching profile in mind. They know the style of play they want to implement. They recruit managers who fit that profile. They support those managers with aligned recruitment, coaching infrastructure and time. And when a change is necessary because even the best processes produce imperfect outcomes they make it strategically, with the next appointment already identified and aligned with the long-term vision.
The Coaching Takeaway
For coaches at every level, this debate carries profound implications for how you approach your career and your craft.
If you are given time, use it wisely. The gift of patience from a board or an owner is not unlimited. Arteta won the FA Cup in his first season, a tangible early return that bought him the goodwill to endure two eighth-place finishes. Simeone won the Europa League within months of arriving. Schmidt secured promotion in his first full season. Time is not a passive resource; you must show progress within it, even if the ultimate destination is years away.
Build an identity that outlasts individuals. The coaches who survive longest are those whose teams have a recognisable identity that does not depend on any single player. Simeone lost Godin, Costa, Griezmann and countless others, yet Atletico always looked and felt like an Atletico team. Your tactical framework should be robust enough to absorb personnel changes without losing its core character.
Communicate the journey, not just the results. Arteta's early Arsenal sides were not exciting to watch. But he communicated clearly about where the team was heading, why certain decisions were being made and what the endpoint looked like. This transparency built trust with the board and, eventually, with the fans. Frank's failure at Tottenham was partly a failure of communication, he could never articulate a vision that people believed in.
Understand your context. Not every club can offer you five years. Not every owner has the patience of the Kroenkes or the loyalty of Heidenheim's Holger Sanwald. Understanding the realistic timeline you are working within and delivering appropriately within it is a fundamental coaching skill.
The evidence is clear: the most successful football clubs in the modern era are those that give their coaches time. But time alone is not enough. It must be accompanied by alignment, investment, clear communication and genuine progress. The coaches who thrive are not those who simply survive, they are those who use every day of their tenure to build something that lasts.
