Russell Martin & Gary O’Neil: Does sacking a Premier League manager help you avoid relegation?

Not counting this season, there have been 91 times when a team have parted company with their manager while in the drop zone – and on 36 of those occasions they avoided relegation.

That is a success rate of 40%, so we know the difficult decision can work.

Of those 36 cases, five of the teams were exactly five points adrift when the manager left, like Wolves.

Sam Allardyce kept up two of those five teams – Blackburn in 2008-09 and Sunderland in 2015-16.

Tony Parkes, as a caretaker, saved Blackburn from such a perilous position in 1996-97, while Harry Redknapp saw Tottenham to safety in 2008-09.

Tony Pulis helped Crystal Palace avoid the drop in 2013-14, although by the time he took over from caretaker Keith Millen they were only three points off safety.

Only one of those five instances happened this late in a season, though – when Blackburn sacked Paul Ince on 16 December 2008 and hired Allardyce two days later.

The other four changes with teams five points adrift all happened in October.

One good omen for Wolves is that they were the second most recent team who changed managers while in the bottom three and stayed up.

That was when Julen Lopetegui replaced Bruno Lage – via Steve Davis’ caretaker spell – just before the 2022 World Cup.