Are managers ever relieved to be sacked? ‘It is a relief of pressure – but then you miss that pressure’

With his dark shades, designer clothes and warm grin cutting through the winter chill, Ruben Amorim looked a million dollars as he walked outside his Cheshire mansion with his wife on Monday afternoon.

He actually looked around $13.5million, to be precise (the pay-off for him and his staff), after being sacked a few hours earlier as Manchester United head coach.

The compensation for the Portuguese and his staff will ease the disappointment, but in that moment, as he walked towards the cameras, he did not look disappointed. He looked like a weight had been lifted from his shoulders.


For some managers, the sack can come as a relief from the huge pressure of arresting a struggling football team or the strain of the constant pressure from the club hierachy and the fans in the stands.

For others, it can bring embarrassment and uncertainty about the future.

Amorim is not the only high-profile sacking in recent weeks, with Enzo Maresca and Chelsea also parting ways.

Lucrative payoffs should lessen any worries over paying bills while they are between jobs, while both retain strong professional reputations. They are at the top of the football managerial food chain and will not be out of work for long.

But for former Barrow manager Andy Whing, his sacking in December after 11 months in his first English Football League (EFL) job, came as a huge blow and has left him unoccupied for the first time in his career as a player and coach.

“When the sporting director called me (after a midweek 3-0 defeat at home to Tranmere Rovers left Barrow 18th in League Two) and eventually told me, I was shocked and disappointed,” Whing tells The Athletic.

“Then, after a couple of days, it turns into a feeling, for me anyway, of not wanting to let anyone down. There is a sense of embarrassment at losing your job.

“It’s tough. You can become bitter and angry, but you have to accept it and learn from it. You have to move forward.”

Whing, who had a playing career as a defender with Coventry City, Brighton & Hove Albion and Oxford United before entering coaching at Banbury United and Solihull Moors, is the latest victim of a precarious industry where even successful managers are vulnerable.

“I am an Aston Villa fan and at the start of the season even Unai Emery was being questioned when Villa didn’t win in their first five games,” Whing says.

“I had lost four in the previous 15 games and we nearly got into the third round of the FA Cup but lost on penalties at Wigan, so the perception from the outside, people who have reached out to me since, was that they were baffled.

“Perhaps the perception inside the club was different in terms of where the club should be and the expectations are certainly rising. You look at Amorim and United were sixth. Chelsea were fifth when Maresca left, and Ryan Mason has lost his job at West Bromwich Albion too — it’s frightening.”

Despite the precarious nature of club management, without a big pay-off to fall back upon, Whing, who worked in a sofa warehouse when he first started coaching, is looking to get back into the game as quickly as he can and has set about preparing for his next opportunity.

But for some managers, the sacking does come as a relief.

Paul Lambert said he felt excited when Aston Villa finally called time on his sorry spell in 2015, during a turbulent period when owner Randy Lerner was trying to sell the club.

“You get that relief,” he told the Undr the Cosh podcast last year. “Honestly, I had a unicycle and everything, f***ing going about the place and juggling, I was delighted. I couldn’t wait to get out because I knew what was happening, I knew there was no help forthcoming and you’re taking it.”

“It’s not that you’re happy with what just happened,” former Swansea City manager Garry Monk told The Athletic in an interview in 2021, shortly after losing his job at Sheffield Wednesday.

“But it’s like the relief of: ‘I don’t have to wake up tomorrow and go and try to convince 50-60 people that working hard is the best thing that they should be doing’.”

Former Barnsley and Bury manager David Flitcroft shared similar feelings to Monk when he was sacked by Bury in 2016.

“I felt the weight was lifted, when the pressure becomes so intense and you don’t think you can find a way out, and you don’t think there’s an answer,” he tells The Athletic.

“I loved what I achieved at Bury. I had committed so much and when I couldn’t get the club wins, I was OK with getting the sack because I thought, ‘Well, someone else can take it on and start to hopefully get this club back on track and get them working again.’

“I couldn’t unravel what was going wrong. I was trying everything and sometimes trying too hard.”

Steve Bruce has admitted he also offered to fall upon his sword at Newcastle United after the takeover of the club by the Saudi consortium led by Amanda Staveley and Mehrdad Ghodoussi in 2021.

“The euphoria of Newcastle, the support, the crowd, everything about it was as if the doom and gloom had shifted and everything was euphoric,” he told the Business of Sport podcast in 2023, even admitting he recommended current manager Eddie Howe as his successor. “They’ve had an unbelievable rise in 18 months or two years.

“But I had to say to them, ‘You might have to take me out of the equation’. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say, but I realised it was best for the club because everything was euphoric around it, the only negative was me.”

On the initial feeling of leaving a job, Flitcroft says: “You think, ‘Right, I don’t have to worry about winning on Tuesday night’ or the fog that descends and closes you down. It is analysis to paralysis because the games are relentless in the lower leagues.

“When the fog descends, you’ve got problems in the boardroom to deal with, problems with supporters, problems with players, and that’s the mindset that you only know as a manager. You are not in a problem-solving state of mind.”

Flitcroft says he once had a member of his club’s hierarchy who took him to Anfield to watch Liverpool play and afterwards stated that was how he wanted the team to play. “We had lower league players, but he wanted me to get the team playing like Liverpool,” he says.

“After one defeat, I had a chairman tell me to cancel the day off on Sunday and arrange a game for the team at the training ground so he could see if they were bothered. You don’t miss those pressures.”

Such gestures like Bruce’s at Newcastle are all well and good until the reality for many sacked managers — that they may struggle to pay the bills in the immediate future — hits home. Long term, they have to get back into the game quickly or face the prospect of being left behind.

“That relief lasts a very short time,” Flitcroft says. “Then you start to think about all your staff and what will happen to them and their families, their kids, as well as yourself.

“It is like throwing a stone in a lake. There is a ripple effect. Have they got something that supports them? That’s the thing that hits you hard.”