Barely an Hour After Michael Carrick, Crystal Palace Sack Pierre Sage

Crystal Palace's statement ran to 81 words. It confirmed that Pierre Sage has left his role as manager, that three of his coaches — Jamal Alioui, Damien Della Santa and Sandy Guichard — have gone with him, and that an update on his replacement will arrive "in due course." It landed on Thursday afternoon, barely an hour after Manchester United announced Michael Carrick's sacking: the first two Premier League managers to lose their jobs this season, gone on the same day. Opta counted what that means — only the sixth time in Premier League history that two managers have left their positions on the same day during a season, and the first since Gary O'Neil and Russell Martin went on December 15, 2024.

Palace's half of the day needs no dressing up. They are bottom of the Premier League: seven points from ten games, two wins, one draw, seven defeats, and 24 goals conceded — more than any other side in the division. Sunday's 3-1 defeat at home to Liverpool was a fourth loss in a row, and it left them bottom after a complete round of fixtures for the first time since December 2017.

The last game was not even the worst of them, which is its own part of the story. Palace started well at Selhurst Park: Yéremy Pino hit the bar, Jørgen Strand Larsen chipped Alisson only to be ruled narrowly offside, and the Liverpool goalkeeper finished with six saves. Palace lost anyway — Alexis Mac Allister's header on 40 minutes, Florian Wirtz on 54, Alexander Isak on 89, with Eddie Nketiah's stoppage-time penalty the only reply.

The full record of the afternoon sits on the game's Game Center page, and Previously's account of Wirtz's first league goal tells the other side of it. Sage's own verdict, given to his post-match press conference, was the plainest summary of his five months: "Football is not about what you deserve. It's about how efficient you are, and we have a lack of efficiency offensively and defensively."

He arrived on June 15 with a record that made the appointment look clever. Sage had just taken Lens to second place in Ligue 1, behind only Paris Saint-Germain, and to the first Coupe de France in the club's history; his fellow managers voted him the league's manager of the year. Before that, at Lyon, he had taken over a side bottom of the table in November 2023 and pulled them into Europe — a rescue his former owner John Textor later described by calling his own decision to sack Sage "one of the dumbest decisions of my life" and Sage himself "an absolute savant." Palace gave him a three-year contract. It lasted 150 days.

What he inherited was the hardest act in the club's history to follow. Oliver Glasner had delivered the FA Cup, the UEFA Conference League and the Community Shield — the most successful period Palace have known — and then left at the end of last season, having told the club in January that he would go. He is at Nottingham Forest now.

Two of the players who built that success, Maxence Lacroix and Daniel Muñoz, left in the summer, and Palace spent less than any other Premier League club on replacing them. Ismaïla Sarr, who scored 21 goals last season, has been badly missed through injury. The results never came: five conceded at Brighton in October, a 2-0 defeat at Tottenham in the penultimate league game, a Europa League campaign sitting 21st of the 36 teams. Sage's last league win, on October 11, was against Glasner's Forest.

Sixteen games in all, then: five wins, three draws, eight defeats. In 121 years of the club, only one permanent manager has overseen fewer — Frank de Boer, who lasted five games in 2017 before Palace pulled the same lever. The parallel is not flattering, and neither is the one comparison Sage controlled. His Lens side conceded the second-fewest goals in France last season. His Palace side conceded more than anyone in England.

The replacement is already taking shape. Sky Sports reports that Palace are working on a deal for Thomas Frank, and BBC Sport is among the outlets reporting that talks are advanced; the club wants the appointment finalised before the trip to Coventry City on Saturday, November 21. Frank was on Palace's list in the summer, before Sage was given the job, and talkSPORT reports he is interested. He has been out of work since Tottenham sacked him in February, less than eight months into that job, with Spurs 16th — and a Premier League win rate there of 26.9%, the lowest of any Tottenham manager in the competition's history, as the Telegraph has recorded it.

The counter-argument is the seven years before Tottenham. At Brentford, Frank won promotion in 2021, kept a small-budget side comfortably in the division and finished ninth in 2023: 132 wins in 317 games. Palace have just spent a summer demonstrating what the league's smallest spend brings, and they would be betting that the Brentford version of Frank is the real one. Sean Dyche has also been touted, and Sky's account of the club's wider list runs to Frank Lampard, Vítor Pereira, Kim Hellberg, Vítor Matos, Tony Popovic, Ole Werner and Jens Berthel Askou. Whoever signs gets nine days of this break, a Europa League game against Real Sociedad on November 26, and a first league assignment away to the side in 17th — Coventry, three places and two points above Palace.

In May, this club lifted a European trophy. It goes into the weekend bottom of the Premier League, without a manager, waiting on a man who was sacked himself nine months ago. The break gives Steve Parish until November 21 to make the appointment. The table gives the new man no time at all.