Nine Premier League clubs will have new managers when the season kicks off on Friday, but few will feel the heat quite like Enzo Maresca, Andoni Iraola and Xabi Alonso. The flurry of changes mean Manchester United boss Michael Carrick, who only arrived at Old Trafford in January, is already the league’s 10th-longest-serving manager. Maresca, Iraola and Alonso will face the fiercest scrutiny as they embark on daunting jobs at Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea.
Not since 1946/47, the first campaign after World War II, has there been so much managerial churn before the start of an English top-flight campaign.
Alonso was long linked with Liverpool, where he won the Champions League as a player. The Spaniard caught Liverpool’s eye after his exploits at Bournemouth, where he improved the club’s league position in each of his three campaigns. Instead, Chelsea is the next stop in his managerial career. The Blues struggled to a 10th-place finish in the Premier League and have since gone back into the transfer market, notably making Morgan Rogers the most expensive British player in history.
After that, he masterminded Leicester’s return to the Premier League before switching to Chelsea, where he won the UEFA Conference League and Club World Cup during a turbulent 18-month stint. But on the evidence of City’s lacklustre 3-0 loss to Premier League champions Arsenal in the Community Shield on Sunday, Maresca faces a huge task to win the club’s first league title since 2024.
