Chelsea sack ANOTHER manager, Pep Guardiola leaves Man City & GOAL's seven bold predictions for the second half of the Premier League season

Nobody really believes that Liverpool boss Arne Slot will be sacked anytime soon - not least because the Dutchman lifted the Premier League trophy just over six months ago. The Reds have also recovered from a historically bad run of form to piece together an eight-game undefeated run in all competitions that put them back in the Champions League places.

However, we've seen nothing during the past five weeks to suggest that Liverpool are moving in the right direction again. Slot may have stopped the rot but there are zero signs of progress. Truth be told, we're no longer sure of the general plan because the players appear utterly devoid of ideas - which is a staggering state of affairs that reflects horribly on the manager.

Both Slot and his team are doing - and saying - the same things over and over again but, for some reason, still expecting different results. So, while we still expect Liverpool to qualify for next season's Champions League, that's only due to two factors: England will almost certainly have an extra spot again this year and the Reds' rivals for a top-five finish have even more problems than they do right now.

However, the scrutiny of Slot and his tactics is going to seriously intensify during the second half of what we're supremely confident will be a trophy-less season, because while Liverpool are picking up points again, they're still stinking out Anfield with their performances.

Rightly or wrongly, Arsenal have a reputation for bottling big games, so some people are expecting them to collapse during the title run-in. However, while the Gunners could certainly start feeling the weight of trying to win a first title since 2004, we don't actually think they'll be put under any pressure - at least not externally.

Reigning champions Liverpool are already out of the running, Manchester United, Chelsea and Tottenham were never really in the race, while Aston Villa's winning streak was always going to prove unsustainable.

Of course, Manchester City have plenty of previous when it comes to overhauling Arsenal down the home stretch but Pep Guardiola's squad is not as strong as it once was, with several recent signings failing dismally to fill the void left by illustrious predecessors.

Arsenal, by contrast, have never been stronger under Mikel Arteta, who has been able to cope quite comfortably with a number of injury issues during the first half of the season due to the depth of his pool of players at the Emirates.

When one also considers that the Gunners have already played most of their main rivals away from home, a dominant title triumph looks more like a probability than a possibility.

Enzo Maresca may have won the Club World Cup with Chelsea just over six months ago - but his dismissal wasn't remotely surprising. The Blues had tumbled out of the top four after a dire run of one win from seven league games and the writing had been on the wall from the moment the Italian publicly criticised the club for a perceived lack of support in the 48 hours that followed the Champions League loss to Atalanta in Bergamo. It's also not a shock to learn that Liam Rosenior is being lined up to replace Maresca at the helm, as he's already working for Chelsea's 'feeder' club, Strasbourg.

In fairness to the former full-back, he's done a fine job in France. Strasbourg are currently seventh in Ligue 1 and progressed to the last 16 of the Conference League as the top seeds. However, it's hard to get too excited about the appointment of a man that has no experience of coaching - or even playing - at an elite European club and was sacked by Hull due to his allegedly negative tactics. Consequently, we can see the fans turning on him - and the owners - pretty quickly if Chelsea miss out on Champions League football, meaning the Blues' bumbling board could be looking for yet another new coach this summer.

We thought West Ham United were going down even before they got humiliated by Wolves on Saturday - so we're 100 percent sure of it now. 

Obviously, the club is going to back Nuno Espirito Santo in the transfer market, with the Hammers imminently set to sign both Pablo Felipe and Taty Castellanos at a combined cost of £47m. However, we're not remotely convinced that either man will succeed where so many other strikers have failed - not least because the team is playing so poorly.

The club's rightly maligned owners may have been right to get rid of Graham Potter at the tail end of September - the results were as poor as the football - but it's not as if things have improved on either front under his Portuguese successor.

West Ham are still only four points away from safety and have some quality players in their team, such as Lucas Paqueta and Jarrod Bowen. But no team is too good or too big to go down - and especially not one that concedes far too many goals without scoring anywhere near enough, which is just a sure-fire recipe for relegation.

Pep Guardiola recently pointed out that he's asked if he's considering leaving Manchester City at some stage of every single season. However, the speculation surrounding his future feels different this time around.

Guardiola still has just under 18 months to run on his current contract and says he remains perfectly happy at the Etihad. The club's Abu Dhabi-based owners are also continuing to strengthen the Catalan's squad at enormous expense, with Antoine Semenyo likely to be the next signing through the door.

However, City have already started lining up potential replacements, with their reported top target Enzo Maresca now on the market after the Italian effectively - and rather tellingly - talked his way out of a job at Chelsea.

There are obviously plenty of other variables in play here, including the outcome of the Premier League's case against the club for more than 100 alleged breaches of financial regulations, but as Guardiola said himself, he's going to step down "sooner or later" and we suspect he's going to ride off into the sunset after completing 10 transformative seasons at City.

What Sunderland did during the first half of the season was legitimately remarkable. Lest anyone forget, all three newly promoted teams were once again expected to go straight back down.

Granted, Sunderland spent an awful lot of money during the transfer window - but that brought its own problems for coach Regis Le Bris, in the sense that he essentially had to immediately integrate a plethora of new players into his team. That's no easy task - just ask Arne Slot.

However, Le Bris has managed the situation masterfully, with Sunderland sitting seventh at the time of writing, just four points behind Liverpool in fourth. 

Now, we don't think the Black Cats have sufficient firepower to propel themselves into the Champions League - but we do believe that European football is there for the taking because they're a nightmare to play at the Stadium of Light, boast the third-best defence in the league (just 17 goals conceded) and only Arsenal have lost fewer games so far this term.

Ruben Amorim is extremely lucky to still be in charge of Manchester United. His FA Cup-winning predecessor, Erik ten Hag, was sacked after a poor start to the 2024-25 campaign but the team didn't get any better under Amorim.

On the contrary, United regressed on his watch and ended up setting a string of unwanted records on their way to their worst-ever Premier League finish (15th), while at the same time suffering the ultimate ignominy of being beaten by serial losers Spurs in the Europa League final.

On the face of it, the situation has improved this season, as United are sixth in the standings, and just three points behind Liverpool in fourth. But fighting for European football was the least the fans expected after more than £200m was spent overhauling the attack during the summer and the cold, hard truth is that United are still playing poorly, while Amorim continues to perplex with his bizarre and often damaging in-game changes.

Despite all of this, though, we don't see Amorim getting sacked between now and the end of the season. For one thing, the weakness of those around them, coupled with their lack of European football, means United are actually well-placed to finish in the top six - which can be sold to the supporters as progress.

Perhaps more importantly than anything else, though, Sir Jim Ratcliffe has very much backed himself into a corner with Amorim by investing so much time, money and effort in hiring, defending and supporting him.

So, while we don't doubt for a second that Amorim will deserve the sack this summer, we fully expect him to still be in charge next season.