Crystal Palace have fired Pierre Sage just 16 games into his ultimately doomed tenure at Selhurst Park, making him the second Premier League boss to lose his job after Michael Carrick’s Manchester United demise.

The final straw proved to be Sunday’s limp 3–1 defeat to Liverpool which left the Eagles propping up the Premier League table for the duration of the November international break.

“Today, my job is not the most important thing,” Sage insisted immediately after Palace’s seventh league loss in 10 games. “The most important thing is to find an efficient solution for the team and club.” The club have come to the conclusion that changing Sage’s job is that solution.

It’s been a bleak season in south London. After the two most trophy-laden campaigns in the club’s entire history, Sage failed to build upon the success laid by Oliver Glasner. Even the rare wins which Palace scrambled were caveated by great fortune, with their affable French coach memorably offering his sympathies to Fulham and Nottingham Forest, who both conspired to lose despite creating vastly more chances.

The November international break is a familiar graveyard for under-performing managers, serving as the last extended club hiatus before the relentless churn of festive fixtures limits any adaptation time for an incoming manager. Several Premier League sides will also be considering a managerial change—including a Manchester United team sat only two places above Palace in the table—but it’s the Eagles who pulled the trigger first.

Thomas Frank the Frontrunner to Take Over

Former Brentford and Tottenham Hotspur boss Thomas Frank is the leading contender to take the Selhurst Park hot seat. Frank has been unattached since parting ways with Spurs in February following a dismal run of form which initially got worse in his immediate absence. The cerebral Dane excelled on the other side of the capital with Brentford, although it’s hard to disentangle quite how much that owed to the structure of the west London club rather than Frank’s innate qualities.

BBC Sport’s Sami Mokbel reports talks are advanced between Palace and Frank, narrowly down a search that had previously seen the club identify seven possible successors, per Sky Sports News.

In addition to Frank, fellow ex-Premier League operator Sean Dyche was touted. Dyche has a rather more rugged reputation but is more familiar with the pressures of a relegation battle, having successfully evaded such doom with Burnley and Everton in the past. Vítor Pereira boasts a similar track record with Wolverhampton Wanderers and Nottingham Forest while Frank Lampard is engaged in his own plight against the plughole with Coventry City.

Some of Palace’s best signings in recent years have been plucked from the Championship. The likes of Michael Olise, Eberechi Eze and Adam Wharton were all snapped up from the second tier and Palace are thought to have considered Middlesbrough’s Kim Hellberg and Vítor Matos of Swansea City.

Australia’s national team manager Tony Popovic, who spent five years as a player at Crystal Palace at the start of the 21st century, was another figure under consideration.