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Arsene Wenger

LONDON. — The “life expectancy” of an English Premier League soccer manager has been drastically cut since the new-look competition began in 1992-93.

On the opening day of that season, the 22 bosses had been in their jobs for an average of 3.24 years, or 1 184 days to be precise.

Five of them had been in their jobs for more than five years, from George Graham at Arsenal and Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United, to Steve Coppell at Crystal Palace, Joe Royle at Oldham and Brian Clough at Nottingham Forest.

Only one current English Premier League manager has been in his job more than three years, let alone five, and that’s Arsenal’s Arsene Wenger, who celebrated 19 years at the club last week.

As things stand in October 2015, the 18 current bosses are averaging 2.28 years each in their jobs, and if the freakishly long-serving Wenger is removed from that equation, then the average plummets to 1.29 years, or 473 days each.

What used to be a job with a reasonable expectation of years to get it right has become an occupation where each anniversary in the post is a big milestone.

When managers were sacked in the 1992-93 season, they had been in their jobs an average of 2.6 years each.

Last season the corresponding figure was 1.91 years and in 2013-14, when 12 English Premier League managers were axed, not including those who left of their own volition, it was 1.22 years.

Getting the sack is now part of parcel of being a Premier League manager as Brendan Rodgers, holidaying in Spain as he recovers from the boot at Liverpool, knows only too well.

But it is only part of the story. Not all managers are forced to leave, and in fact resignations are part of the bigger picture, often to fill a job vacated by someone else getting sacked.

To illustrate the changing nature of sackings over time, Sportsmail has taken official figures for Premier League sackings from the League Managers’ Association, and data from OPTA for each manager who has been sacked.

The accompanying table (PL sackings by season) shows the number of sackings by season, and the average time each sacked manager had been in his job. Over the course of the Premier League as a whole, 133 managers have been sacked, averaging just over two years each in their jobs.

The most sackings were in 2013-14 when Paolo Di Canio, Martin Jol, Andre Villas-Boas and David Moyes were all among the axed, after a little more than a year in their posts on average.

The fewest sackings in a season have been three, twice.

Our second table shows the number of permanent managers at each of the 47 clubs in Premier League history and their average length of tenure of each of those.

Manchester United and Arsenal are the most secure employers over the period as a whole with just three managers each, averaging more than seven and a half years; both are skewed of course by long-serving bosses in Ferguson and Wenger. — Mailonline.