A couple of months ago, if you’d been told that Liam Rosenior and Darren Fletcher would be in charge of Chelsea and Manchester United respectively, and were asked to guess a date it would happen, your answer would have not been the first week of 2026.

Both managers’ careers seem to be in fast-forward, even if the precise nature of their jobs is different. Rosenior is in permanent charge (although this tends to mean little at Chelsea), and Fletcher is in temporary charge (although sometimes this means something more long-term). But both find themselves in this situation — in part — because there’s an obvious lack of top-class managers up for grabs. Why?

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To start, the Premier League has been a victim of its own success in two different ways.

First, the lure of working in the dominant (and richest) league in the world means mid-table and bottom-half clubs have attracted high-calibre foreign managers who would otherwise have worked their way up their own domestic leagues, perhaps taking charge of some of the biggest clubs in their country by this point.

Bournemouth’s Andoni Iraola, for example, was an extremely highly rated coach at Rayo Vallecano, and swapped a middling La Liga side for a historical relegation battler in England.

Oliver Glasner has turned Crystal Palace into a cup-winning side but it’s worth remembering that this was a Europa League-winning manager who took charge of a side who were in 15th after losing 10 of their previous 17 matches.

Glasner and Iraola have been happy to work at two of the top-flight’s less prestigious clubs (Warren Little/Getty Images)

Unai Emery was also a Europa League-winning manager, who took charge of an Aston Villa side when they were in 14th, only three points above the relegation zone. He’s a slightly different case, as he’s already taken Villa to the Champions League, and they’re involved in this season’s title fight, but the point remains: Villa were punching above their weight by bringing in a manager of his level.

All three have performed excellently, and all could be in the frame for the Manchester United job — if they want it — and maybe their Premier League experience will be considered of value. Equally, Glasner and Iraola now find themselves 14th and 15th in the league. It’s probably easier to justify appointing managers who are accustomed to their side being at the top of a league, even if that is abroad.

The second issue is the English clubs’ (relative) dominance of European football, even if they haven’t translated their financial dominance into as many European Cups as you might expect. But the Premier League is often spoken about as a de facto Super League. Last season’s Europa League final was contested by two massively underperforming Premier League clubs, 16th-placed Manchester United and 17th-placed Tottenham Hotspur. Both Ange Postecoglou and Ruben Amorim have since left their jobs.