Late season coaching changes in LaLiga

Perhaps inspired by events in Seville and Gran Canaria, 19th place Granada have also since decided to roll the dice, sacking Alexander Medina and bringing back Jose Ramon Sandoval who famously oversaw one of the great late escape acts in 2015 when his Granada side collected ten points from their final four games to beat the drop.

However, the recent history suggests clubs should tread carefully when deciding to sack coaches late in the season with a subsequent improvement under new management far from guaranteed.

Late season coaching changes in LaLiga – The recent history

Coaching changes in March or later over the previous five seasons

Over the five seasons prior to this one, there were 20 coaching changes made by LaLiga clubs from March 1st onwards, 85% of which were made by teams in the bottom eight places.

Of those 20 changes, just five resulted in teams finishing higher than they were at the time of the switch. Three of those cases did see clubs rise from the relegation zone to a position of safety with Javi Calleja guiding Alaves from 20th to 16th in 2021, Javier Aguirre taking Mallorca from 18th to 16th in 2022 while Pepe Bordalas (18th to 15th) secured final day safety for Getafe last term.

Those are clearly the success stories that help convince struggling clubs that making changes late in the season can prove the difference between relegation and safety. However, the overall evidence, from the last five years at least, suggests that more often than not these late season switches either have a negligible impact or end up backfiring.

There are seven cases over the past five years where teams have dismissed coaches only to end up in exactly the same position. Meanwhile on eight occasions, teams have actually gone on to finish even lower.

There are even three times when clubs have been outside the relegation zone at the time of the change, only to be relegated to the Segunda Division.

Granada were one place outside the drop zone when they sacked Robert Moreno in March 2022 but neither caretaker Ruben Torrecilla nor Aitor Karanka could save them. The margins are often very fine though and in that case, had Jorge Molina converted his final day penalty against Espanyol, the Andalusians would have actually finished 15th as opposed to 18th.

Aside from Bordalas’ late impact at Getafe and Sevilla’s wild resurgence under Jose Luis Mendilibar, last season was a particularly bleak year for the “new manager bounce”. Espanyol and Real Valladolid were both outside of the relegation zone when they sacked coaches on the same day in early April. Both ultimately went down with neither Luis Garcia nor Paulo Pezzolano having the desired impact.

The constant search for something new

Given there is little evidence to suggest that changing coaches late in the season can be safely relied upon to produce a better end result, it’s perhaps surprising that struggling clubs continue to fire and hire at such a rate.

Sacking a coach is after all an expensive business with Celta Vigo reportedly needing to pay out €6m to Rafa Benitez following his dismissal earlier this month, not small change by any means for a bottom half LaLiga club.

Celta are at least in a position where their top flight status is salvageable, but that’s surely not the case at Granada or Almeria. If the current points tally of LaLiga’s hapless bottom two was combined, they’d still only have as many as that of the 17th placed Galicians.