After just four games of the 2022/23 season the English Premier League has lost its first manager.
Bournemouth parted company with Scott Parker. A statement on the club webiste (afcb.co.uk) reads:
*AFC Bournemouth can announce that the club has parted company with head coach Scott Parker.
Maxim Demin said: “I would like to place on record my gratitude to Scott and his team for their efforts during their time with us. Our promotion back to the Premier League last season under his tenure will always be remembered as one of the most successful seasons in our history.
“However, in order for us to keep progressing as a team and a Club as a whole, it is unconditional that we are aligned in our strategy to run the club sustainably. We must also show belief in and respect for one another. That is the approach that has brought this club so much success in recent history, and one that we will not veer from now. Our search for a new head coach will begin immediately.”
Gary O’Neil will take interim charge of the team, and will be assisted by Shaun Cooper and Tommy Elphick.*
Bournemouth are currently seventeenth in the early league, one of three teams on three points from four games.
Parker's departure follows the team's 9-0 humiliation by a rampant Liverpool at the weekend.
This, though, would appear to not be the only reason the club chose to part company with the manager who returned the club's EPL status after a two year hiatus.
In comments after the match a 'bitterly disappointed' Parker appeared to suggest the club were under-equipped for the challenges of the Premier League, with a young squad not at the level required.
Club owner, Maxim Denim, seemed to take issue with Parker's comments and insisted that sustainable development of the club was the way forward.
Combined, the comments of both parties point to a manager looking at the quality of players in his squad and the challenge of remaining in the Premier League without seeing a way to have the one achieve the other, while at the same time the owner refuses to be drawn into a spending frenzy.
With the club having paid a £4.75 million fine for breaking league financial fair play rules only a few years ago, Denim is possibly determined to ensure the club does not become a money pit, even if that means being a 'boing-boing' club, moving up and down between EPL and EFL.
The obvious danger of that is not making promotion before parachute payments from the higher league end, and then struggling to build a team capable of making the push.
Parker's sacking puts managerial blood in the water and attention of the threshing pack of fans, journalists, and speculative gamblers will turn to the next potential victim.
With consecutive victories, including that one against Liverpool, Manchester United's Erik ten Hag may have lifted himself out of the frame. The 9-0 victory which did for Parker probably wasn't needed to give Jürgen Klopp the needed security, but it will have cheered him mightily.
Leicester's Brendan Rogers, West Ham's David Moyes, Aston Villa's Steven Gerard, Chelseas's Thomas Tuchel, Everton's Frank Lampard, and Wolves Bruno Lage will all be hoping for wins in the mid-week suite of games and it's likely several of them will be disappointed.
In this off-balance World Cup year games will come thick and fast and managers whose teams make a slow start can expect to feel the weight of expectation manifesting itself rapidly.
