Ten shock Premier League resignations before Pep Guardiola joins the list

There is a growing belief that Pep Guardiola might resign as Manchester City manager; he certainly won’t be sacked. And it shouldn’t be over Anton Ferdinand.

Premier League managers almost never resign now because of woke. It is all about the sack or, in the worst-case scenario, being mutually consented. That way there is at least a nice pay-off at the end of a depressing road.

But no matter how bad things get at Manchester City, they will not sack their greatest manager. If Guardiola cannot turn things around he might well have to walk.

Only 10 managers have done so in the middle of a Premier League season this century. Just one of those was by text…

Roy Hodgson (Crystal Palace)
It was an open secret that the two parties would split imminently – Hodgson announced he was going to “step aside so that the club can bring forward their plans for a new manager, as intended for this summer” – but two factors meant those arrangements had to be fast-tracked.

Hodgson’s health was ostensibly what swayed the final decision. After he collapsed during a training session in February, Palace cancelled a press conference about half an hour before it was scheduled to take place. While the well-being of their manager was undoubtedly the priority, it did circumvent some awkward questions at a time they were actively looking to replace him.

A run of two wins from 15 games, as well as a series of regrettable comments regarding “spoilt” fans, young players and the medical department, rendered Hodgson’s position as untenable regardless. Oliver Glasner had already been lined up to take over.

Dick Advocaat (Sunderland)
There were similar echoes in the story of Advocaat and Sunderland.

A successful firefighting mission after inheriting Gus Poyet’s mess in March 2015 turned into an only slightly longer-term mission when the Black Cats persuaded Advocaat to sign a one-year contract eight days after he initially turned them down and signalled his intentions to retire.

Four months and a winless start to the season later, the Dutchman “made the decision to go after only eight games as I felt it was important to give everyone time to turn things around”.

Liverpool sacked Brendan Rodgers on the same day. While the Reds ended up with Jurgen Klopp, Sunderland soon appointed Sam Allardyce as their latest mid-season fly-by-night rescue artist.

As chairman Ellis Short implied, Advocaat might have helped with the subsequent change to the wine and gravy budget: “It is also testament to his character that he has forgone any kind of a financial settlement, something which is very unusual in football.”

Harry Redknapp (QPR)
It is unknown whether the chronic knee problems Redknapp was suffering from in early 2015 would have required immediate surgery had QPR not slipped into the relegation zone on the back of a seven-game winless run which also featured a 3-0 home defeat to League One promotion hopefuls Sheffield United. But it also is known: they wouldn’t have.

“I haven’t got the hump, we haven’t had a row,” Redknapp added to dispel but also entirely fuel suggestions that transfers might have had something to do with it. QPR’s only winter addition additions were Ryan Manning on a free and Mauro Zarate on loan; their 71 combined minutes were of scant assistance in a relegation battle.

Two months after tendering his resignation, Redknapp expanded on reasons which already seemed perfectly clear. Except now his knee was less of a problem; he simply “didn’t know who was on my side at the end and who wasn’t” and “always thought there were one or two people with their own agendas,” while constant speculation linking Tim Sherwood with the job “got on my nerves”, which seems like a natural reaction.

Redknapp only had two more jobs in management before retiring – or as many wins as Chris Ramsey oversaw in 13 games to lead the Hoops down to the Championship.

Roy Keane (Sunderland)
For a man whose current relevance in the sport revolves mainly around an obsession with pointing out what a particular person’s job is, Keane had no qualms with calling time on his when things became unworkable at Sunderland.

“Roy Keane hasn’t been sacked because we’ve a bad team; he’s resigning because we’ve a good team he feels he can’t bring any further,” said Black Cats chairman Niall Quinn after reportedly first being informed of his compatriot’s decision via text, then later through a slightly more official fax.

Keane has not often revisited the situation since, but did explain in 2021 that he “got a bit impatient” over his contract status yet still rejected a new deal so as not to seem like he was “panicking” or “desperate” after a few bad results; the Irishman lost six of his last seven games as Sunderland manager.

Perhaps most critical in Keane’s final decision was actually how new owner Short addressed him. “I didn’t like the way he used to speak to me. The tone of his voice,” he said more than a decade later. “I shouldn’t be spoken down to. I should only be spoken down to by my dad.”

Freud would have a field day.

Kevin Keegan (Newcastle United)
No-one does a resignation quite like Kev. While nothing will ever beat stepping down in a Wembley toilet cubicle, it takes quite something to leave Newcastle in the lurch twice and remain a club hero.

Under the immense weight of watching Sir Alex Ferguson go to Middlesbrough and get something for a fair few years, Keegan first admitted defeat in January 1997. His return 11 years later was never likely to end well.

It lasted just nine months before Keegan, armed with seven wins in 22 games, declared: “A manager must have the right to manage and that clubs should not impose upon any manager any player that he does not want.”

Two transfers in particular infuriated the manager and led to an irrevocable rift with owner Mike Ashley and executive director Dennis Wise. It was a different time.

Alan Curbishley (West Ham)
For some people, signing Xisco and Ignacio Gonzalez represents the breaking point. In other cases, it’s selling Anton Ferdinand and George McCartney. Each to their own.

“The selection of players is critical to the job of the manager and I had an agreement with the club that I alone would determine the composition of the squad,” Curbishley said from a position of relative strength, West Ham having won two of their first three games of the season.

“However, the club continued to make significant player decisions without involving me. In the end such a breach of trust and confidence meant that I had no option but to leave.”

The Hammers tried to sue for breach of contract, but were made to pay £2.2m instead for constructive dismissal as Curbishley had negotiated a clause in his deal “confirming that I would have final say on the selection of players to be transferred to and from the club”.

Who were Ferdinand and McCartney sold to? Resignation merchants Sunderland, of course.

Sam Allardyce (Bolton)
It remains one of the longest managerial tenures in Premier League history, a reign steeped in such iconic folklore as to be almost too Barclays.

And what a power move it was for Allardyce, two games from the end of the season with Bolton in fifth, having twice come from behind at Stamford Bridge to hold Chelsea to a draw which damaged their title hopes, to tender his immediate resignation.

Chairman Phil Gartside declared the manager’s reasons to be “private” and for a time they remained as such, but Allardyce elucidated years later when he cited a lack of ambition.

“We needed to spend some money to give us an opportunity to finish in the Champions League and I was turned down flat and told that we don’t want to finish in the Champions League,” he said. “That was it. I went home and said to [my wife] Lynne, ‘That’s me finished’. She didn’t believe me, nobody believed but, believe you me, when Sam makes his mind up, there is no turning back.”

That is pure, uncut, unadulterated Allardyce.

Jacques Santini (Tottenham)
“My time at Tottenham has been memorable,” said Santini of a 13-game career footnote which culminated in three straight defeats and an unhealthy amount of a summer transfer budget being spent on Noureddine Naybet by sporting director Frank Arnesen.

The Frenchman explained his “deep regret” at having to walk away because of “private issues in my personal life”, although four months later he added through gritted teeth that “they promised me a big apartment on the beach and I found myself 200m from the sea with a view of my neighbours”.

Gordon Strachan (Southampton)
After guiding Southampton to survival and then eighth with an FA Cup final and the ensuing reward of European football, the decision was made by Strachan not to extend his contract and instead move on to better things, like a hip replacement.

The news was relayed in January that Strachan would be leaving at the end of the season. But there was no heartfelt Jurgen Klopp message, nor anything resembling the farewell tour the German received; Strachan managed five more games before leaving early because “the situation has become increasingly difficult”.

John Gregory (Aston Villa)
On October 27, 2001, Aston Villa went top of the Premier League with a 3-2 win over Bolton.

As Gregory tells the story, he asked owner Doug Ellis “if I could enhance the team and the answer was ‘no’, which was fair enough”.

In early January, he said of resignation that “it’s a thing I’d never do. I wouldn’t turn my back on the lads because they are still a fantastic bunch to work for”.

On January 24, with Villa down in seventh and struggling, Gregory resigned and signalled his intention to take a “break” from management.

On January 30, he accepted a three-and-a-half-year contract at Derby.