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Sacked on Sunday? Meulensteen and Hughton on red alert

| 08.02.2014
SPORTSBOOK ODDS

Who’d be a manager?

Most of them are on a hiding to nothing. Just ask Michael Laudrup, who lost his job at Swansea this week because of their midwinter slide.

Thoughts have already turned to which boss will be next to vacate their post and Fulham’s Rene Meulensteen is favourite.

His side travel to former club Manchester United this weekend and are massive 14/1 outsiders to upset David Moyes’ Red Devils.

Meulensteen conceded Fulham have hit ‘rock bottom’ after crashing out of the FA Cup to League One strugglers Sheffield United.

In all honesty that fourth round replay was a distraction for the Craven Cottage club as they have slipped to the Premier League basement since the original tie.

Fulham are odds-on favourites to go down and were four points from safety before the start of play on February 8th.

Wayne Rooney’s fantastic scoring record of seven in his last seven against Fulham must make punters sanguine about their chances of pulling off a shock at Old Trafford.

It also puts Meulensteen under major pressure. His January signings, including Greece striker Kostas Mitroglou, must hit the ground running or Fulham could be cut adrift at the bottom.

Club owner Shahid Khan has also recruited experienced coaches Ray Wilkins and Alan Curbishley onto the staff. Either man might step into the breach if he fires Meulensteen.

Any repetition of Manchester City’s 7-0 mauling of Norwich earlier in the season at Carrow Road meanwhile might make the position of Chris Hughton untenable.

Although results against title contenders will hardly shape the Canaries’ survival prospects, they are 6/1 to make it two defeats on the spin for City.

Manuel Pellegrini’s team must feel wounded after seeing their perfect home record go when Chelsea won at the Etihad last time out.

Norwich could easily be whipping boys again, and another humiliation could well cost Hughton his job.

Former Canaries defender Malky Mackay is favourite to succeed Hughton, having recently steered Cardiff City into the top-flight.

Garry Monk, Laudrup’s interim replacement at Swansea, may have a brief stint in the Liberty Stadium dugout if bitter rivals Cardiff enjoy another Welsh derby day delight.

Bluebirds new signing Kenwyne Jones stirred the pot ahead of the teams’ second meeting of the season when he described the Swans as being “in disarray”.

Swansea are odds-on at 19/20, however, to rise to the challenge and leave Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s side in the bottom three.

Cardiff remain rated more likely with bookmakers to be relegated than the Swans.

Don’t be surprised if another manager has gone overboard by Monday morning.

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Author

Sam Barnard

Sam has been writing for Coral since January 2014, and is the assistant editor of the news site. As well as the main betting sports, football, tennis and cricket, he covers the likes of golf, F1 and darts too, the latter of which has become a particular favourite. Sam enjoys playing as much as writing about sports, but niggling injuries have limited his participation in recent years, so is happy to mainly watch the pros such as Manchester United, Yorkshire CCC, Raymond van Barneveld and even Gibraltar national football team instead.