Ranking all 24 EFL Championship managers by how likely they are to being sacked | OneFootball

With the September international break over, it's likely that the Championship sack race will hot up. Here's FLW's ranking on who's most likely to go.

The football manager's position has never been less secure, so here's a ranking of all 24 Championship managers according to how likely we think they are to be sacked.

The September international break is a distant memory and the nights are starting to draw in, so it's likely that some managerial hot-seats are set to become considerably warmer.

The list of managerial replacements during the 2024-25 season is dizzying. Ten new managers came in at the end of the season alone, with more than one club having replaced theirs more than once over the previous nine months.

The question of who'll be the next to go is an open one. There's a case to be made for saying that fewer than half of those listed will still be in their positions by the last weekend of this season, and that number will almost certainly be even greater by the start of next season.

So with all of that in mind, FLW have ranked all 24 Championship managers by how likely they are to be sacked this season.

There is something counterintuitive about putting the manager of a team with no points and one goal from six games being in bottom place on a list like this, but Chris WIlder hasn't been in the Sheffield United job for two weeks yet, so he's probably safe until the end of the season, unless the Blades are still on no points in a couple of months time. Nobody knows Sheffield United better than Wilder - this is, after all, his third spell as their manager - and while promotion might already be beyond them for this season, he should be okay for the rest of the season so long as they pull clear of the relegation places.

Having taken Luton Town into the Premier League in 2023, Rob Edwards was a natural choice to succeed Michael Carrick at Middlesbrough during the summer. And it's fair to say that he has had an excellent start. Boro have only dropped two points from their first six games of the season, and they're already four points clear at the top of the table. He isn't going anywhere, unless somebody bigger were to come in for him.

22 Mark Robins

An even bigger surprise to the start of this season than Middlesbrough soaring to the top of the table has been Stoke City's ascent to second place. Stoke were last relegated from the Premier League in 2018, and in the seven seasons since then they've failed to finish above 14th in the Championship. But Mark Robins has taken them to the second automatic promotion place, and that has surely bought him some amount of slack, even were Stoke's form to dip.

21 Gerhard Struber

Another team to have had a successful start to the season is Bristol City, who are well-placed for a shot at promotion this season under Gerhard Struber. He arrived as a replacement for the Norwich-bound Liam Manning during the summer, and only a surprise home defeat at the hands of Oxford United prevented them from moving into the top two before the end of September. It's possible that takeover talk could alter this equation. New owners do have a tendency to bring in their own man. But were that to happen, it wouldn't be on the basis of Struber's record as the Robins' manager.

20 Frank Lampard

The former Derby, Chelsea and Everton manager Frank Lampard had big boots to fill in replacing Mark Robins at Coventry in November 2024, but he took them into the play-offs, where they only lost to the eventually-promoted Sunderland in the semi-finals thanks to a goal in stoppage-time in extra-time. To miss out on a place at Wembley and a shot at a place in the Premier League was heartbreaking, and Coventry could have been forgiven a bit of a hangover at the start of this season. But instead, they're still unbeaten after six games, one of which was a 7-1 win against Queens Park Rangers.

Paul Heckingbottom is the first manager on this list to have been in his position for more than a year. But only just, having been appointed in August 2024. He was arguably fortunate to survive the end of last season. Preston North End only finished in 20th place in the Championship, and only two points above the relegation places. But he did, and Preston are another of the Championship's more stalwart clubs to have had a decent start to this season, with North End sitting in 5th place in the table. But if Preston's form were to decline, that narrow escape might just get back into the minds of the club's powers that be.

18 Marti Cifuentes

The very fact that Marti Cifuentes left Queens Park Rangers in 15th in the Championship last season made his appointment at the freshly-relegated Leicester City something of a surprise. But expectations will be high for him this season nevertheless, and he's made a decent start, with the Foxes in 4th place in the Championship. He also has the potential protection of the club's financial position, which has restricted spending, while seasoned stars such as Jamie Vardy have left, and it's likely that the club will be hit with a points deduction this season, all of which is bad news for Leicester City but may be good for Cifuentes' job security.

Alex Neil took the Millwall job at the very end of 2024, and he was rewarded for his team's performance with a new contract at the end of last season. The Lions finished last season in 8th place in the Championship, and were in the chase for a play-off place until the last weekend of the season. This season has seen a solid start, with the team in the middle of the table, and doesn't seem likely that he'd be sacked unless the team put in a run of bad form that hasn't looked likely so far yet this season.

16 Julien Stephan

Stephan replaced Marti Cifuentes at Queens Park Rangers with a decent CV, having taken Rennes into the Champions League in 2020. QPR had an extremely busy summer in the transfer window, and expectations were higher than they had been around Loftus Road with the arrival of some talented new attacking players, including Richard Kone and Kwame Poku. There's an argument to be made that, if Stephan was going to be sacked this season, it was most likely to happen after their 7-1 humbling at Coventry in August, but he held on then and Rangers have won all three of their league games since.

15 Henrik Pedersen

Henrik Pedersen may just have the toughest job in the EFL at the moment. With a threadbare squad, no likelihood of being able to bring in replacements, and a points deduction likely to be applied, Sheffield Wednesday are unsurprisingly among the favourites to be relegated at the end of this season. But like Marti Cifuentes, Pedersen has excuses, and it might even be the case that they couldn't afford to sack him, even if they wanted to. The eccentricity of Dejphon Chansiri means that a sacking can't be ruled out at Hillsborough, but it's not as likely as it feels as though it should be.