Bournemouth’s ruthless O’Neil sacking is a gamble history shows could work | Ben Fisher

There are echoes in Iraola’s arrival of Pochettino replacing Adkins and Potter coming in for Hughton but the grass is not always greener

On Monday afternoon it was difficult not to flash back to the surprising chain of events on the other side of the New Forest on 18 January 2013. A decade on from Southampton replacing Nigel Adkins with Mauricio Pochettino, when the club dumped the double-edged news in an ice-cold statement, Bournemouth informed Gary O’Neil he was no longer their manager and promptly – well, just two and a half hours later – named Andoni Iraola as his successor.

Southampton were lampooned for dismissing Adkins, accused of disrespecting a manager who had taken the club off the canvas in League One and to the bright lights of the Premier League, via successive promotions, and of, frankly, making a ludicrous decision. O’Neil’s journey at Bournemouth, whom he joined as a first-team coach under Jonathan Woodgate in February 2021, was a more rocky reign but the job he did to avoid relegation with a degree of comfort this season rightly put him in the conversation for manager of the season.

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