Ranking the 10 worst Premier League caretaker managers ever: Lampard, Shearer, Rangnick…

Appointing a caretaker or interim manager is always the sign of a season gone awry.

Sometimes things work out, with a fresh face improving the vibes and overseeing an uptick in form before shaking hands and going on their merry way.

That’s what Manchester United probably have in mind, with Michael Carrick set to take the reins until the end of the 2025-26 campaign following the dismissal of Ruben Amorim.

But things can always get worse. We’ve taken a look at 10 of the worst caretaker and interim managerial stints in Premier League history.

“In Roma, they didn’t sack me before the final in Tirana,” Jose Mourinho reflected on winning the UEFA Conference League with Roma.

“And in Tottenham, they sacked me before the final at Wembley. Roma gave me the chance to win the final at Tirana. At Tottenham, I had no chance.”

Still sting, does it, Jose?

To be fair, he has a point. Sacking a manager with a proven record of geeing up his players for one-off games, on the eve of the 2021 League Cup final, was certainly a bold call by Daniel Levy.

…Especially when the plan was to give the job to the incredibly green Mason.

It didn’t work. Spurs produced a respectable but ultimately anaemic performance in a 1-o defeat to Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City.

Every chance Mourinho’s Spurs would’ve fared no better at Wembley, but we’ll never know, and he’ll forever have the satisfaction of saying he would’ve won it. Well done, Levy.

Mason actually oversaw a decent enough points return from Tottenham, who won four of their last six games that season, but it was too little too late. Was it all really worth it?

It wouldn’t be fair to pin Charlton’s 2006-07 relegation on Reed.

They lost seven of their opening eight games under Iain Dowie that season and spent almost the entire season down in the mire.

But there’s every chance the Addicks might’ve stayed up were it not for Reed’s distinctly rubbish (seven games, five defeats, 0.57 points per game) mid-season month in charge.

Results picked up following Alan Pardew’s appointment in December and they were only four points from safety come the final table. A lesson for there for idle chairmen; time is money.

Remember him? Liar.

Black was brought in to steer Villa’s sinking ship for the final few weeks of their outrageously terrible 2015-16 campaign.

He bears zero responsibility for their relegation – the damage had long been done – but his sorry stint ensured they’d be slipping down to the Championship with barely a whimper.

Seven games in charge. One draw. Six defeats. An impressively poor 0.14 points per game was the ending that season deserved.

If you’re to draw up a list of people responsible for Newcastle United’s relegation in 2008-09, Shearer probably wouldn’t crack the top five. You can probably guess who features considerably higher up this list.

Still, the awkward fact remains that Shearer – or better yet, a proven coach with actual experience – could have saved the Magpies that year.

The club’s all-time top goalscorer managed just one win from his eight games in charge, and they ended up just one point behind 17th-placed Hull City.

It was a mediocre, hodgepodge squad and a difficult situation – but their Championship fate was far from inevitable.

Including interims and caretakers, over 500 managers have taken charge of Premier League games.

We’d wager not a single one of them has looked less like they wanted to be there than Stellini, Antonio Conte’s former assistant who briefly served as Tottenham’s interim.

“It is not a club in crisis, absolutely not because everyone took the decision for the best,” the Italian told reporters after being parachuted in.

“When you follow the process, you are not in crisis and if we have some matters, we have to be compact, we have to stick together, go ahead, continue to move on and play the match.”

Diplomatic enough. The right tone when top four was still eminently achievable with 10 games to go.

It looked less so following Stellini’s disastrous four-game spell, culminating in him walking following a hapless 6-1 mauling away to Newcastle. Mason once again returned for the final stretch, but the damage had been done.

Still, he somehow wasn’t the worst caretaker appointment a ‘big six’ club made in April 2023…

If you consider the context of the transfer ban and a particularly basket case period in Roman Abramovich’s reign, Lampard’s first stint wasn’t terrible.

Things didn’t end well and Thomas Tuchel immediately showed the club what a genuinely elite manager looks like.

But Lampard’s impact at Everton and the job he’s now doing at Coventry City show that he’s not a completely lost cause as a coach.

He certainly looked it on his profoundly miserable caretaker return to Stamford Bridge, though. God, did he look it.

A pair of limp 2-0 defeats to Real Madrid in the Champions League consigned the 2022-23 campaign to be Chelsea’s worst of the Premier League era.

Eleven games. One win. Two draws. Eight losses. Abysmal. Looking purely at the results and the squad inherited, Lampard has a case to be the number one on this list.

Any mitigation comes from the season being a write-off that rapidly faded from memory. Relatively speaking, there was no real lasting harm done.

The 2014-15 campaign was a wild ride for Newcastle.

They failed to win any of their first seven matches. Then they won five in a row to jump as high as fifth in late November. That hot streak alone would account for half of their victories in the entire season.

Alan Pardew left his post shortly after Christmas, with local boy Carver left to pick up the pieces in the second half of the campaign.

If you want the definition of a footballing malaise, look no further than the eight successive defeats Carver oversaw in the spring of 2015.

Newcastle were lucky to survive such ineptitude, but it was the start of a rot that ended in their relegation the following year.

One of our favourite long-running Twitter vendettas is that of The Athletic writer Michael Cox against Rangnick . You have to say he mounts a convincing argument.

Manchester United probably had bigger problems than the manager in 2021-22, sure.

And while the German’s refreshing honesty about the issues facing the club (“they require open-heart surgery”) was undoubtedly entertaining and held more than a kernel of truth, it was undermined a little by the club finishing 2nd and 3rd in the seasons before and after his interim stint.

Rangnick deserves his fair share of the blame for the club ending the season on their then-lowest points tally of the Premier League era.

A 37% win ratio is the club’s lowest of the modern era – yes, even (marginally) worse than Amorim’s.

The prevailing image we have of Connor is an uncomfortable one.

Poor fella looked absolutely crestfallen in post-match interviews as he presided over defeat after defeat as Wolves sank like a stone in 2011-12.

Checking his record, turns out that’s about right.

Wolves were neck-and-neck with QPR and Blackburn Rovers in the relegation battle when Connor replaced McCarthy in the dugout in late February.

Wolves didn’t win a single one of his 13 games in charge and ended up rock bottom, having taken just four points from 39 on offer in the run-in. Oof.

What is it about Mike Ashley era Newcastle? Clue’s in the name.

The infamous C-bomb Kinnear chucked in the direction of Daily Mirror journalist Simon Bird set the tone for a terse and frankly shambolic few months on Tyneside.

The nadir of the Ashley era. That’s saying something.