The start of the 2025-2026 English Premier League season is here but for the first time in pretty much two decades, the head coach of Chelsea isn’t in the list of Premier League head coaches under the most pressure heading into a new season.
That meme of Enzo Maresca smiling and kicking his feet up like a young boy who just got handed a ton of candy while his Chelsea team led 3-0 against PSG in the Club World Cup final, summed up where he stands heading into the new season after winning the CWC, Conference League and qualifying Chelsea to the Champions League.
The fine margins are the true definition between success and failure particularly in modern professional sports where each loss or win carries more weight than it ever did and it showed none more so than Chelsea’s form to close out last season.
Heading into the final stretch of the immediate past season, Maresca was on the bubble to get sacked after his his team went from a legit league title contender to the brink of missing out on competing in the Champions League.
However, by winning the Conference League, Chelsea picked up another European title and managed to scrape through to book a Champions League spot as Newcastle and Nottingham Forest’s slipped up.
Recapturing the confidence Maresca’s Blues possessed earlier on in the season to close out the campaign propelled Chelsea to shock Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain and win the Club World Cup.
Winning is good but winning in a dominant fashion is way greater and Chelsea destroying PSG in the first half of the World Cup final in New York has all but made Maresca an unmovable force at least for this season though some of Maresca’s colleagues aren’t so lucky as the Italian and need to have a great season else suffer the consequences.
Before getting into the details on the coaches dealing with the most pressure for the 2025-2026 campaign, a few honourable mentions need to be cleared first.
For starters, Tottenham Hotspurs head coach Thomas Frank needs a great season in his debut run with the Europa League champions after replacing Ange Postecoglou who won the Europa League title and in the process, ended Spurs’ barren title run that run over a decade.
Spurs getting top talent Mohammed Kudus and being in the hunt for either Eberechi Eze or Rodrygo or Savinho while needing to deliver in the Champions League and qualify to compete in the competition in consecutive fashion, puts Frank under some level of pressure to deliver.
Throwing away a 2-0 lead to lose the UEFA Super Cup to PSG on penalties after conceding twice in the final 10 minutes is not a good start at all.
Andoni Iraola of AFC Bournemouth is another name among the honourable mentions after overseeing a fine campaign that had the Cherries record their highest points tally ever in the Premier League (56 points). However, the past campaign could have been even better had it not been for a late season dip that took Bournemouth from a Europa League contender to a 10th place finish.
Bournemouth’s backline was decimated after that impressive season and the heat is on Iraola to prove his quality again by building the squad back up to another top 10 finish and make himself a must-have coach should any vacancies come up at the end of the upcoming season. With that out of the way, here are the coaches under the most pressure in the 2025-2026 campaign.
Ruben Amorim
The Portuguese was going to need some time to get things right and set his system in motion but few people could have predicted how bad the team was going to be under Amorim. The poor state of Man United was to the tune of the Red Devils recording seven wins, six draws and 14 losses in 27 games in the EPL.
The biggest defence for Amorim was that he didn’t get a preseason with his team and needed a certain iteration of players for his vaunted system to work.
Both issues have been fixed as the former Sporting Lisbon coach was part of Man United’s two title winning preseason run and has been given two EPL proven players in Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha and also two of the best young players in their respective positions in Diego Leon and Benjamin Sesko.
Cunha and Mbeumo finished among the top 13 chance creators in the EPL last season and having them playing along Bruno Fernandes behind the highest Under 23 scorer in Europe’s Top Five Leagues in Sesko, is Man United making a huge bet to fix its terrible goal scoring issues.
Even if United miss out on signing Carlos Baleba, the club is well equipped to make it to the Europa League at least and Amorim has to deliver that.
Arne Slot
Getting to the top is tough, staying there is tougher and the Dutchman’s flying start to life in the EPL could get a serious reality check in his second season. Unlike his first season, Slot won’t benefit from Jurgen Klopp’s title winning proven system as he remodels the title group in his image.
Beyond winning the title again, Slot has to have his team dominate the way champions are supposed to and dominate the way the past dynasties in the EPL like Man United, Man City and Chelsea particularly under Mourinho, did.
Fielding the most expensive player signing in Florian Wirtz and a group of exciting young players in Jeremie Frimpong, Hugo Ekitike and Milos Kerkez comes with tremendous pressure Slot will deal with all season long. A worthy note to include is that by the time the transfer window closes, Liverpool could possess the two most expensive signings in Premier League history should Alexander Isak join the Reds from Newcastle United.
Mikel Arteta
So the Spanish manager after half a decade fully in charge, finally has his striker with the Gunners nabbing Viktor Gyokeres from Sporting Lisbon. The Swedish striker scored 54 goals in 52 games in all competitions last season and will line up next to the productive Bukayo Saka to keep up with Liverpool.
Last season, the Reds scored 86 goals and have added Ekitike, Florian Wirtz and are in the hunt for Isak (23 goals in 34 EPL games). Arsenal on the other hand, scored 69 goals last season.
But in typical Arteta fashion, the Spaniard doubled down on his defensive line by bringing in another defender in former Valencia player Cristhian Mosquera even in the face of making that queer move by signing Noni Madueke from Chelsea.
After finishing in second place three straight times, this is the make or break season for Arteta; if Arsenal miss out on winning the league, an FA Cup or a UEFA Champions League title buys him more time but not a Carabao Cup win though.
Having operated a stable backline over the years, the glut of defenders is sure to push Arteta to be flexible with his system and go in for a back three defensive line to deal with the loss of physicality from the deep playmaking position after replacing Thomas Partey with Martin Zubimendi.
Scott Parker
While not under the kind of pressure those mentioned above are dealing with, the former Fulham and Bournemouth manager is under significant duress despite Burnley’s modest ambitions after getting back to the elite division.
The ex-West Ham United player has shown that he has the quality to qualify teams to the Premier League from the Championship but has heavily disappointed in keeping them up. This season, Parker needs to deliver to shed his growing reputation as the direct opposite of Sam Allardyce; the latter who excelled in keeping teams afloat in the Premier League.
