West Ham know what they have appointed in Scott Parker; it is less clear whether Crystal Palace have any clue of their impending mistake.

These are the worst managers in Premier League history, of those with 50 or more games coached in the competition, ranked by PPG.

The best Premier League managers of all time ranked by PPG are laughing at this sorry lot. And probably West Ham.

10) Steve Cooper (Nottingham Forest and Leicester): 0.93 pts per game
It is a harsh reflection on a job done so well in sub-optimal circumstances but Nottingham Forest supporters showed their love and appreciation to Cooper in the immediate aftermath of a 5-0 defeat to Fulham, less than a fortnight before he was sacked. The Trees were still outside the relegation zone when the popular manager was shown the door, as were Leicester when that ill-fated and slightly less popular reign was brought to a close after a dozen games.

9) Steve Kean (Blackburn): 0.90 pts per game
Former Singapore League champion and 2015 Coach of the Year Kean had a chastening start to life in management, replacing Sam Allardyce in controversial conditions and proceeding to entirely torpedo Blackburn’s established Premier League status of the previous decade. Forcing Liverpool into sacking Roy Hodgson and beating both Arsenal and Manchester United en route to relegation were genuine achievements.

8) Phil Brown (Hull): 0.88 pts per game
That phenomenal Geovanni-inspired start to the 2008/09 season is doing some ludicrously heavy lifting, a run of six wins, two draws and one defeat to kick off Hull’s first top-flight season accounting for 20 of Brown’s 59 career Premier League points as a manager. That second bite at the cherry seems unlikely to materialise unless Peterborough Sports make it all the way up from the Southern League Premier Division Central.

7) Chris Wilder (Sheffield United): 0.88 pts per game
That 2019/20 season, in which those revolutionary Blades finished two points behind Arsenal, feels like a bygone era. Wilder followed that up with one of the worst campaigns in Premier League history, picking up two points from 17 lockdown games before a handful of meaningless wins precluded his March 2021 exit. Then in December 2023 he and they picked up where everything was left off: with Sheffield United by far the worst team in the division.

6) Daniel Farke (Norwich and Leeds): 0.88 pts per game
The first two-thirds of Farke’s Premier League manager life tell a rather different story to the subsequent part. From his Norwich reign to Leeds’ fabled Manchester City defeat at the Etihad in November 2025, his record was P62 W9 D10 L43, with a PPG of 0.59.

Thereafter with an improving, giant Leeds side, P34 W10 D17 L7 turns out at 1.38 – higher than the admittedly slightly larger sample sizes of the Premier League manager careers of Harry Redknapp (1.37) and Eddie Howe (1.36).

5) Iain Dowie (Crystal Palace, Charlton and Hull): 0.81 pts per game
Properly miserable territory now, this. Dowie’s fingerprints were all over relegations in all three of his Premier League jobs: with Palace despite Andy Johnson’s best efforts; guiding Charlton to an unrecoverable position of 20th before his November sacking; and finishing the fine work of Brown when he took over Hull in March 2010.

4) David Wagner (Huddersfield): 0.80 pts per game
One remarkable survival season with Huddersfield was immediately followed by a dreadful campaign which culminated in Wagner leaving by mutual consent after winning three of his last 32 games. It is probably a good job he never took Norwich up because with his and their track records they might somehow have achieved minus points without a deduction.

3) Mick McCarthy (Sunderland and Wolves): 0.79 pts per game
Roy Keane’s best friend is forever indebted to Derby for distracting from just how dreadful a record he has. McCarthy inherited an awful Sunderland side in 2002/03 but between that side and the iteration he guided back up through securing the Championship title two years later, the Irishman lost his first 14 games as a top-flight manager, scoring four goals.

Those two Sunderland outfits still rank among the worst Premier League teams ever and while McCarthy did scrape through survival battles with Wolves in 2010 and 2011, he was sacked with them crashing inexorably back into the second tier in 2012.

2) Scott Parker (Fulham, Bournemouth and Burnley): 0.70 pts per game
The managerial embodiment of Too Good For The Championship, Not Good Enough For The Premier League.

West Ham know the good news is that Parker has never not masterminded promotion in a second-tier season. They will also be aware of the bad: he has never not been relegated in a full top-flight campaign either.

Parker started his senior coaching journey in 2019 and has not managed consecutive seasons in the same league since. If they just sack him once he takes them up it should all be fine.

1) Rob Edwards (Luton and Wolves): 0.68 pts per game
The very best of luck to Crystal Palace if they dispense with the admittedly quite doomed Pierre Sage, and replace him with the quantifiably worst manager in Premier League history because the sporting director has worked with him before.

Edwards linked up with Matt Hobbs to remarkable effect at Wolves, when he inherited a mess and somehow made the entire process even more miserable.

He ranked low on the list of those to blame for the ultimate demise of Wolves, and the Luton top-flight season was basically an accident too. But Edwards has done nothing to suggest he is suited to Premier League level currently.