Bournemouth sacking Scott Parker was unsurprising but also undeserved
The good news for Scott Parker is that Bournemouth’s owners agree with him. The club are indeed “ill-equipped” for the Premier League.
The bad news for Scott Parker is that they now have decided the most easily replaced piece of equipment is (hang on) Scott Parker himself; that the simplest way of addressing the concerns raised by Scott Parker over the team managed by Scott Parker is to fire Scott Parker.
Perhaps there is even some logic here. On Saturday night, as Parker spoke about squad strength in the wake of the 9-0 shellacking by Liverpool, Bournemouth looked like an embattled Premier League club led by an honest but relegation-haunted head coach. By Monday morning Bournemouth had become simply an embattled Premier League club. So there’s one half of that problem solved with a click of the fingers.
Either way Parker has become the first Premier League sacking of 2022-23. He is the 12th quickest, in terms of number of days from the start of the season, in the league’s 30-year history. More worrying still, seven of those above him on the list and the three immediately below (Javi Gracia: this is the territory here) never managed a Premier League club again.
What is unique about Parker is that he is now the undisputed No 1 for promoted clubs. No other promoted team have acted so quickly – and it is not hard to see why, mainly because this is such an utterly ruthless act, a junking of any basic notion of loyalty and employer relations.
The initial reaction will, of course, be sympathy. Bournemouth have lost three times this season: twice against two of the top three teams in the world, once against the league leaders. Parker got the club back up at the first time of asking, a feat that is literally money in the pocket for the club’s owner, Maxim Demin.
He is also a sharp, honest likable leader, with the air on the touchline of a much-valued minor royal footman, or a man perpetually off to perform some kind of ceremonial role at a country wedding. He was, until Monday morning, the Premier League’s youngest manager after Mikel Arteta. There is enough demonstrable success in his record to earn at least a shot at another shot.
Plus, Parker was right about the state of his squad. “I am not that surprised given the level here is far greater than we have,” he said after the Liverpool game. “I feel sorry for the players because we are ill-equipped at this level.”
In fairness this, too, is understandable. Bournemouth had a necessary fire sale after relegation in 2019. Twenty players left, raking in £80m-£90m and cutting the wage bill right back. They had a decent year in the Championship after that but lost to Brentford in the playoffs. Parker was appointed in June 2021 and took them up with basically the same squad.
Since Parker’s arrival Bournemouth have added only Championship players, free transfers and hopeful punts. Eight of the team that started the promotion season a year ago also played in the 9-0 at Anfield. And even here this was not a bad 9-0, with five shots to Liverpool’s 19 and a lot of tackles and headers won.
Bournemouth just looked like what they are: a team with too many players still dazed by the step up, unable to win the vital moments. There was even a sense Parker suffered on the end of Jürgen Klopp’s full-body sympathy hugs at the end, an embrace that made him look like a child being comforted at a funeral, the kind of optic that also takes its toll.
And yet, sometimes even being right is not enough. By a more brutal, speculative, purely commercial measure it is also understandable that Bournemouth should sack Parker. In a way this is a sacking that goes to the heart of what head coaches are now at clubs of this scale, where the entire project is about buoyancy, overperformance, finding an equation that will defy scale and keep this entity in the world’s most lucrative league for however many years as it enters a new £10bn TV rights cycle.
The success of clubs such as Brighton and Brentford may be based on more coherent long-term strategies. But there will always be a tendency for club owners to see only the shortcut version, the idea that gravity can be defied with the right blend of luck, will and coaching chemistry.
There is even a kind of gambler’s logic here. Sacking your manager no longer means turning in desperation to the usual roster of jowly firefighters. Europe’s leagues offer a pool of skilful, energetic, instant-impact coaches. At the same time players have a greater agency in their own performances, are more fluent in making decisions, interpreting tactical systems, less in need of the classical father-priest-drill-sergeant figure.
Tell a bunch of elite-level players that we’re changing the system in midseason and they are generally better equipped to shrug, absorb the details and put it into play. Why not attempt a little shock therapy? The fact is sacking your manager has worked quite well in recent times.
Sacking Frank Lampard worked for Chelsea. Sacking Rafa Benítez (and employing Frank Lampard) worked for Everton. Sacking Marcelo Bielsa, Steve Bruce and Nuno Espírito Santo: all of these have turned out to be worth the payoff.
And while it is always tempting to accuse club owners of being overly reactive, perhaps Bournemouth have done the opposite here and reacted logically to the data. Parker’s record managing in the Premier League reads: played 52, lost 32, won eight. Bournemouth’s aggregate score in their past three league fixtures is a 16-0 defeat. The only way the current squad will stay up is by some miracle of adrenal gravity-defiance. Is a coach with that record, expressing his own logical doubts about his squad, the most likely person to dish it up? Perhaps the most reasonable conclusion, however brutal, is: no.
Parker may have deserved more loyalty, may have been sacked despite succeeding at the job in front of him. But the game has also changed, become more vicious, more brutally short term in its horizons. He may be the first but he won’t be the last.