Crystal Palace have sacked French manager Pierre Sage, just months into his tenure, after a slide in results left the team adrift at the foot of the Premier League and nowhere near the start the board had wanted this season.
The London club confirmed the news in an official statement on Thursday: "Crystal Palace can confirm that Pierre Sage has left his role as manager."
A run of poor results sealed his fate. Sage won just two of his 10 Premier League matches and lost five, unable to spark the improvement in performance or results the club craved.
His exit comes just hours after Manchester United's board sacked English manager Michael Carrick.
The 3-1 home defeat to Liverpool proved a hammer blow to Sage's position. Palace dropped to bottom of the table, a world away from where the board had expected to be by now.
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Europe offered no escape. Palace also laboured in the Europa League, picking up just five points from their opening four matches, a return that left their continental campaign on shaky ground.
Sage had joined Palace after walking away from Lens, chasing a new challenge in the Premier League and a fresh chapter in his coaching career. The results never let him settle at the London club.
As the defeats piled up with no sign of a turnaround, the pressure on the Frenchman grew. The board, meanwhile, waited for a team that could find its feet and compete at home and in Europe.
Reports suggest Sage failed to build any momentum or convince the club's hierarchy he could change course. The board duly pulled the plug, opening a new chapter in the hunt for a manager to rescue the season.
Palace have already begun weighing up a list of candidates. Thomas Frank sits among the frontrunners, alongside Sean Dyche, a man with plenty of experience steering sides away from the Premier League trapdoor.
Dyche boasts a strong record in exactly this kind of scrap. He twice led Burnley to promotion and kept them up for six straight seasons, before saving Everton from the drop during his time at Goodison.
So ends Pierre Sage's English adventure, and quickly at that. He left Lens to prove himself in the Premier League but could not deliver the results to earn more time, and now Palace start the search for a man to drag the team back on track.