International football placed in the background until September at least, the focus switches to the club variety. Another Premier League season now just weeks away, surely managers cannot be under pressure before a ball has been kicked. Think again. Issue 118. Go.

Avid readers may remember the Premier League Managers Under Pressure rankings or #PLMUPR for short that I launched last season and for those who don’t, the aim was to measure which managers were feeling the heat at any one point in time.

At first, it was nothing more than ‘vibes’, a feeling as to who is under pressure but vibes alone are rather hard to quantify. Which led me to quantify that in terms of a model, towards the back end of last season.

Something that looked like this:

Not perfect by any stretch - especially when you consider that Liam Rosenior was given the boot just a couple of weeks after but at least there was some semblance of an idea as to how to measure it.

Which means now that the World Cup has finished, I’ve had time to look under the hood and tweak how it works and I think there is something that can be tracked across the season as a whole.

Same idea, but a slight rebranding as I bring to you PRESSURE POINTS

As before, each of the 20 Premier League managers who are in charge at any one moment in time will be scored from 0 to 100. 0 means you are in the job for life, 100 means a chat with the chairman is not far away.

A model that is based on four different criteria, each playing their part in forming a manager’s number of Pressure Points.

Those four criteria are:

But there is no recent form to measure because we are in pre-season?

Fear not, this becomes more important as the season moves on from week to week and because of that, the current scores are simply baseline measures before we get into the cut and thrust of the 2026/27 campaign.

That’s the methodology out of the way (or as much as possible without giving the whole workings of the concept out to the general public) what does that mean for the current crop of the Premier League bosses?

It means, we can track who is under the most pressure at any point of the season but the important thing to remember is that this is not a measure of the Sack Race, this is not a guide to who will be getting the boot next.

It may well be that the manager with the highest Pressure Points is sacked next but that may also be nothing short of a coincidence at the same time. Either way, it does not make good reading for Eddie Howe.

The Newcastle manager is currently on 64.0 Pressure Points, the model ranking him highest because of the Magpies’ disappointing end to the 2024/25 season and the length of Howe’s tenure.

Because although the former Bournemouth boss has the current second longest active reign in the Premier League, that is also a factor that could work against him. His length of tenure could soon mean the end of the road rather than job security.

The fact that he has sold key men this summer is not even part of the model as fan or owner sentiment is not included but even when you ignore the current social noise, there is no doubt that Newcastle need to get off to a bright start next season.

While there is also notable pressure for two of the three managers who will be leading promoted clubs into battle next season. Hull boss Sergej Jakirovic and his Ipswich counterpart Gary O’Neil also deemed to have relative higher scores.

The logic being that any promoted team will always be tasked with a tough transition to the top tier and although both sets of supporters will have been celebrating at the end of last season, that celebration soon turns to realisation.

Hull’s Jakirovic currently has a score of 59.1 Pressure Points after leading the Tigers to EFL Championship playoff success against Middlesbrough just a couple of months ago. Ipswich boss O’Neil slightly further back at 50.7.

The fact that O’Neil has only recently moved from Strasbourg has meant the model has given him a more favourable score but that could quickly increase if results go against the Tractor Boys in the opening few weeks.

While it is the men who find themselves fourth and fifth in the standings that arguably highlight the true context behind the model as those positions are occupied by Andoni Iraola and Enzo Maresca respectively.

Iraola finds himself at 50.5 Pressure Points, Maresca 49.0. If this chart was a simple measure of the Sack Race then you would expect them to be in the bottom five, but due to the previous season’s their new clubs had, they must succeed from the off.

No bedding-in period for either the former Bournemouth or Chelsea manager, but their current measures will easily dissipate if results go as expected. The trick here will be to come back after five weeks of the season and see where they are.

Which leads us to another new installation within the Big Six and Xabi Alonso finds himself with 48.0 Pressure Points - far from being able to put his feet up, the fact that Chelsea were a busted flush last season may be working in his favour for now.

It would be ludicrous to suggest that either Mikel Arteta or Frank Lampard are in danger of being given their marching orders but at the same time, it would be fair to suggest that they are under some form of pressure.

For Arteta, it is a case of picking up where Arsenal left off, the only problem is that if the Gunners do not achieve that then the only way is down. As a consequence, he currently has 46.3 Pressure Points to his name.

A measure that places him eighth in the table, 1.7 points fewer than that of compatriot Xabi Alonso and one that a repeat of Arsenal’s title win would certainly lower by the end of May 2026.

As for Frank Lampard’s Coventry, he finds himself in sixth with 48.8 Pressure Points. Just outside the extreme pressure banding of 50+, the fact that the Sky Blues won the Championship last season painting him in a better light than the Hull and Ipswich managers.

After keeping Tottenham in the Premier League, Roberto De Zerbi currently has 43.3 Pressure Points in 12th. If there is any pressure for the Italian, it arguably comes from a flurry of transfer spend this summer.

Spurs are now the Premier League’s wildcard. Successive 17th finishes means nobody can truly predict where the North London outfit are going to finish this season. No European football means playing once a week, can they convert that into Europe?

While Manchester United are in Europe next season and the model has largely rewarded Michael Carrick for this achievement. The sharp increase in league position plus his relatively short tenure have only generated 31.0 Pressure Points out of 100.

A score that is not even the lowest in the model and this honour goes to Regis Le Bris of Sunderland. The Black Cats boss only has 28.0 Pressure Points, the symptoms of Second Season Syndrome may see that increase in due course.

In isolation, these Pressure Points mean nothing at all. They don't even exist as a concept outside this newsletter, but that's exactly why they can become a useful reference point throughout the season.

For example, let’s take David Moyes’ score of 45.8 - currently ninth out of the 20 managers. A score that suggests that the Everton boss is not under a great deal of pressure at present.

However, let’s also say that Everton decide to get rid of him in September after a dreadful start to the season. We can then say “well the model only had him ninth out of 20, this is a largely unexpected sacking” and in doing so, the model is constantly tested.

I'm yet to decide whether to update them weekly in the newsletter or provide snapshots of the biggest climbers and fallers. I need to work out the best way to bring the model to life, but this should at least set the stage as I use the asset throughout the campaign.

Which means that another asset has been built out as a newsletter-only concept, this joins the 100 club in terms of data capture and there will be a few more to come as the season progresses.

Do you agree with the current Pressure Points? Which managers do you think are too high or too low? I'd love to hear your thoughts as we put the model to the test over the course of the season.

Now that the World Cup has come to a close. I wanted to take a moment to ask for your help.

The Real Football Filter has now reached Issue 118.

That is more than a year of publishing twice a week, analysing the money, media, performance and power shaping the modern game.

The biggest challenge has not been finding things to write about. Football, thankfully, continues to provide endless stories.

The challenge has been making sure more people find it.

So if you have enjoyed reading, whether it is the first issue you have opened or you have been here since the beginning, I would really appreciate you sharing it with someone who you think would enjoy it.

Not because numbers are everything, but because the best newsletters grow through recommendation.

Contact: [email protected]

Follow on X: https://x.com/dantracey1983
Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dantracey/