Which Football Team Replaced Their Manager The Fastest?
The most important man on the touchline, whilst every player wears their football team kit with pride and passion, the manager is the person to make the decision on who gets the right to wear that shirt and play for their club or country.
Some of these managers become vital foundations of a club’s success, with mainstays such as Don Revie at Leeds United, Matt Busby and Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest, Bill Shankly at Liverpool and Arsene Wenger at Arsenal becoming pivotal to a club’s sustained success.
All of these managers had managerial stints that can be measured in decades, but many managers do not get this long to shape the club in their image.
On 18th October 2025, Ange Postecoglou was infamously sacked just 39 days after being appointed as head coach by Nottingham Forest, the shortest ever stint for a permanent football manager in Premier League history. Even worse, he was sacked in the middle of a press conference just 19 minutes after his final loss to Chelsea.
This spell was shorter than Les Reed’s 40-day stint at the helm of relegation-bound Charlton Athletic and Brian Clough’s infamous 44-day spell at Leeds United that would inspire the book and film The Damned United, but none of these three are the shortest managerial stints in history.
The shortest-serving England manager of all time, Sam Allardyce, also became the shortest-serving Premier League manager of all time, spending just 30 days as part of a seemingly hopeless relegation battle.
However, the absolute shortest managerial stint of all time, shorter than Dave Bassett’s four days in charge of Crystal Palace and Marcelo Bielsa’s two days at Lazio, was Leroy Rosenior’s stint in the top job at Torquay United in 2007.
Appointed on 17th May during the midst of an ownership crisis, just ten minutes after the announcement of his appointment, the new management replaced him with Paul Buckle.