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Interim coaches all the rage in mad period in EPL

Published:Thursday | April 6, 2023 | 9:11 AM
Chelsea's head coach Graham Potter celebrates at the end of the English Premier League football match between Leicester City and Chelsea at King Power stadium in Leicester, England, Saturday, March 11, 2023. Chelsea has fired manager Graham Potter with the club languishing in the middle of the Premier League standings despite spending more than $600 million on players in the last two transfer windows. The team announced Potter's departure on Sunday, April 2. (AP Photo/Rui Vieira, file)

Chelsea is days away from playing Real Madrid in the Champions League quarterfinals.

Tottenham is engaged in a nip-and-tuck race for a finish in the English Premier League top four.

Leicester is in an even tighter fight to avoid dropping out of England's lucrative top division.

All three clubs have very different objectives heading into the final weeks of the season. Yet, in one respect, they are in the same position.

None of them have a permanent manager.

In a crazy eight-day span, three of English soccer's biggest clubs thought it best to get rid of their widely respected managers without having any real plan to replace them.

No wonder so many say the business of soccer operates in a world of its own.

So, Chelsea heads into its league match against Wolverhampton on Saturday with Frank Lampard as temporary cover for the fired Graham Potter.

The same Lampard who wasn't deemed capable enough to lead a team battling relegation — Everton fired him in January — and who Chelsea itself sacked two years ago.

Tottenham goes into a huge home game against top-four rival Brighton not with serial winner Antonio Conte in the dugout — he was fired on March 26 — but instead with his former assistant, Cristian Stellini, in charge. Stellini is a long-time No. 2 who seemingly has the same pragmatic approach as the man he has replaced.

As for Leicester, which hosts fellow struggler Bournemouth on Saturday, it seems the club's ownership believes the team is better off under the caretaker charge of unheralded assistant coaches Adam Sadler and Mike Stowell — who have no experience of managing teams at senior level — than under the fired Brendan Rodgers, who has previously been manager at Liverpool and Celtic, two of Britain's most high-profile clubs.

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