Of the twenty Premier League managers who started 2025/26, only seven begin the new season. Sacking is the reflex, but it rarely works – and isn’t cheap.

The problem isn’t impatience. It’s that clubs act before diagnosing what went wrong. When a signing underperforms, is it a recruitment problem – the wrong player – or a coaching one, the right player used poorly? Each needs a different fix, yet clubs reach for the same one: change the coach. Responsibility and accountability are not the same, and neither should default to the dugout.

The summer window is the moment to get ahead of it. Before spending, clubs should agree how they’ll judge whether a signing succeeds or fails on recruitment or coaching – so if a player struggles, they can locate the real fault rather than guess.

This is why TFG believes Operational Intelligence matters. Clubs with clarity fix the fault, not the face.