Vrancken Favourite To Be First SPFL Manager Sacked
Scottish football has never been shy about swinging the axe early, and this season looks primed to continue that tradition.
Three of the Premiership's most eye-catching summer appointments already carry more risk than reward attached to them on betting apps.
Wouter Vrancken walks into Tynecastle with no Scottish experience and a mandate to go one better with a Hearts side that missed out on the title by minutes last season.
Alfred Johansson takes over a Motherwell team fresh off their best finish in years, arriving with a pedigree that includes being sacked from his only previous head coach job after a promising start unravelled.
And at Ibrox, Derek McInnes inherits a club that has burned through five permanent managers since Steven Gerrard left in 2021, with a fanbase unwilling to accept anything less than closing the gap on Celtic immediately.
So who cracks first? Here's the case against each of them.
Vrancken Has A Hard Act To Follow
Vrancken (4/1) arrives with no margin for error. The Edinburgh club missed out on the Premiership title by minutes last season, and the Belgian is ready for the responsibility of trying to go one better than predecessor Derek McInnes.
His remit from the board will be "to compete with the Glasgow teams and to try to overachieve again, try to have a good season again and try to fight for the top spots."
That's an enormous ask for a manager whose entire career has been in Belgium. He's also rebuilding relationships from scratch: he replaced McInnes this summer and brought in largely unfamiliar backroom staff.
His football is high-risk by design - he favours a 4-2-3-1 system with high energy and an aggressive press, which tends to look brilliant when it clicks and chaotic when it doesn't.
Hearts also have proven recently that patience is thin. They sacked Steven Naismith mid-season after a run of poor results despite him having delivered a top-three finish.
A stumbling Champions League/Europa qualifying campaign or a slow league start against sky-high fan expectations could turn hostile fast.
First Scottish Premiership Manager To Be Sacked Odds:
Manager | Team | Odds | Probability |
Wouter Vrancken | Hearts | 4/1 | 20% |
Alfred Johansson | Motherwell | 5/1 | 16.7% |
Derek McInnes | Rangers | 6/1 | 14.3% |
Simo Valakari | St Johnstone | 7/1 | 12.5% |
John McGlynn | Falkirk | 8/1 | 11.1% |
Jim Goodwin | Dundee Utd | 9/1 | 10% |
Neil McCann | Kilmarnock | 10/1 | 9.1% |
Steven Pressley | Dundee | 12/1 | 7.7% |
David Gray | Hibernian | 14/1 | 6.7% |
Craig McLeish | St Mirren | 16/1 | 5.9% |
Stephen Robinson | Aberdeen | 20/1 | 4.8% |
Martin O'Neill | Celtic | 33/1 | 2.9% |
Motherwell's Alfred Needs To Be Great
Johansson's position looks precarious for a few converging reasons. He's replacing Jens Berthel Askou, who led Motherwell to fourth with an attractive, expansive style that briefly had them threatening the title race - that's a hard act to follow at a club now used to overachieving.
He's also unproven at this level: his only senior head coach role was at Rosenborg, where after a string of bad results he was sacked in May 2026, despite having signed a contract extension through 2028 less than a year earlier.
That's a real warning sign. At just 35, this is also Johansson's (5/1) first job in British football and outside Scandinavia, adding an adjustment period.
Motherwell's fans have tasted a fourth-place, European-qualifying season, so tolerance for slow starts will be limited, and a testing festive schedule with trips to Celtic Park on Boxing Day and Aberdeen four days later, could expose cracks quickly if the early results aren't there.
Can McInnes Deliver Rangers Success?
Rangers is simply the least forgiving job in Scottish football right now. McInnes (6/1) is the club's sixth permanent head coach since Steven Gerrard left in 2021.
He walks into a job where his predecessor, Danny Rohl, lasted less than a year before leaving for Red Bull Salzburg, and where Rangers finished third last season, behind both Celtic and McInnes' old club Hearts.
Anything short of closing the gap immediately will be seen as a disappointment given his reputation was built on nearly winning the title with a smaller budget at Tynecastle.
There's also symbolic pressure. McInnes is a boyhood Rangers supporter who previously turned down the job in 2017 while at Aberdeen, so there's no "outsider" excuse if things go wrong - expectations from fans who see this as his dream job will be brutal if results dip.
The early schedule is unforgiving too: a league opener against Dundee United, then a Europa League qualifier against Jagiellonia Bialystok, where failure would drop Rangers into the Conference League - a genuinely embarrassing outcome that could ignite serious pressure within his first month in the job.
Valakari Leads The Rest
Of the rest, St Johnstone's Simo Valakari (7/1) is fourth favourite to be sacked, followed by Falkirk's John McGlynn (8/1) and Dundee United's Jim Goodwin (9/1).
At the 'safe end' are two Northern Irishmen. Martin O'Neill (33/1) delivered another title to Celtic fans, who thought their season was over when they sacked Wilfried Nancy before Christmas.
After joining in March, Stephen Robinson (20/1) hopes a full pre-season can help get Aberdeen off to a fast start this season.
Who do you think will be the first SPFL manager to win the sack race?
