Five of the worst interim managers in Premier League history | OneFootball

Caretaker managers are all the rage in the Premier League this season, with the managerial merry-go-round having led to several short-term replacements arriving in a bid to steady sinking ships.

Not all of those have proven successful however, with Tottenham sacking interim boss Cristian Stellini this week after the club’s humiliating defeat at Newcastle over the weekend. Frank Lampard is also struggling to turn things around as caretaker at Chelsea and we’ve decided to look at five names who failed to solve clubs’ short-term issues.

Here are five of the worst interim managers in Premier League history.

Joe Kinnear

Not the first, or last, appearance by an interim manager at Newcastle.

Joe Kinnear was named as the Magpies’ manager until the end of the season after Kevin Keegan had resigned from his role at St James’ Park in 2008/09 and made an immediate impression – not quite for the right reasons – with an astonishing foul-mouthed tirade at the assembled press.

Kinnear had been a bizarre appointment, who at the time of his arrival at Newcastle had not worked in the Premier League for almost a decade and had been out of work entirely for almost four years.

He won just five of his 26 matches in charge to drag Newcastle into a relegation battle, before departing for health reasons.

Incredibly, he returned to Newcastle for another spell in 2013, this time as Director of Football. Once again he made rather more headlines off the pitch than on it, including an infamous talkSPORT interview that saw Kinnear made several incorrect statements about his own career.

His list of self-proclaimed (and false) achievements included winning the LMA Manager of the Year award three times (actually won once, in 1994) and that he had been responsible for the signing of Tim Krul, the Dutch goalkeeper who arrived at Newcastle two years before Kinnear.

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Alan Shearer

Newcastle turned to a club legend in a bid to salvage their aforementioned season in 2008/09, with a chaotic campaign having seen Kevin Keegan resign, replacement Joe Kinnear suffer with health issues and Chris Hughton thrust into a caretaker role of his own.

Mike Ashley brought back Alan Shearer to the club as Newcastle battled against relegation, an appointment that, while popular, failed to address a slide towards the second tier.

The club’s all-time record goalscorer had no previous managerial experience and was unable to stop the rot, one which saw Shearer claim just one win and five points from his eight games in charge.

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Defeat at Aston Villa on the final day confirmed Newcastle’s relegation to the Championship, with Shearer later revealing he had agreed to stay on as manager after relegation, before a u-turn from the Newcastle ownership.

“I thought I had the job at Newcastle. We had got relegated and I had sat down with the appropriate guys and we had agreed everything,” he told BBC Radio 5 Live in 2010.

“I have not spoken to them since. I rang someone up and he didn’t know what was going on, and I never got a phone call after that.”

Hughton was instead named as the club’s new manager and led the Magpies to promotion back into the Premier League at the first attempt.

Terry Connor

Terry Connor was promoted into the senior role at Wolves on an interim basis, following the sacking of Mick McCarthy during the 2011/12 campaign.

He took over with the club 18th in the table and endured a torrid time in charge, with a draw at Newcastle in his first fixture proving to be a false dawn as Wolves plummeted towards the Championship.

Wolves proceeded to lose seven consecutive Premier League games under Connor’s management to find themselves cut adrift inside the bottom three.

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Connor collected just four points from his 13 games in charge and failed to oversee a single win, as Wolves finished bottom of the Premier League table with a paltry 25 points for the campaign.

He is the only manager in Premier League history to have a 0% win rate having taken charge of 10+ games.

John Carver

John Carver was named as Newcastle’s interim manager following Alan Pardew’s exit for Crystal Palace during the 2014/15 season, resuming the role he briefly held after Sir Bobby Robson’s sacking at St James’ Park in 2004.

Carver was named as interim boss until the end of the season, despite a record of three defeats and one draw from his first four games in charge. He earned a first win against Hull City, but later oversaw an unwanted record-breaking run.

Newcastle lost eight consecutive games under Carver’s management, who boldly and bizarrely stated his belief that he was ‘the best coach in the Premier League’ despite the Magpies’ woeful winless run.

Newcastle narrowly survived relegation at the end of the season, though it was little to do with Carver’s contribution as the interim boss won just 13 points from his 19 league fixtures in charge.

Unsurprisingly, he was not kept on.

Cristian Stellini

Cristian Stellini was sacked as Tottenham’s interim manager this week, just weeks after he replaced Antonio Conte on a temporary basis.

Stellini had worked as an assistant to Conte and failed to oversee an improvement in results, with the north Londoners ending his reign as interim boss following Sunday’s humiliation at Newcastle.

Spurs suffered an embarrassing 6-1 defeat to their top-four rivals at St James’ Park, a performance which saw them concede five goals inside the opening 21 minutes.

Stellini had failed to make significant changes to the tactical approach that saw Conte struggle for consistent results and oversaw just one win from his four league games in charge. Back-to-back defeats to Bournemouth and Newcastle have left Spurs six points adrift of the top four, having played more games than the sides immediately above them.

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