Crystal Palace manager Frank de Boer was sacked ignominiously, just four games into the Premier League season after a 1-0 loss to Burnley that saw them bottom of the table with no points to their name.

Palace played a total of five competitive games under de Boer, of which they won only one, a 2-1 win in the EFL Cup over Ipswich Town, courtesy of a couple of goals from James McArthur.

Here are some interesting statistics from the Dutchman’s reign:

  • Frank de Boer was sacked with his team not scoring a single goal during his Premier League reign. He became the first PL manager to have suffered this fate.
  • Crystal Palace also became the first top-flight team since Preston North End in the 1924-’25 season to lose their opening four games without scoring a goal. 
  • Palace have had eight permanent managers since chairman Steve Parish took over in August 2010. While Dougie Freedman lasted 90 matches, the most of them all, de Boer’s reign was the shortest and lasted just five. 
  • De Boer’s 77-day reign was also the shortest, in terms of matches, by a permanent Premier League manager and the third shortest by any manager in the Premier League. Les Reed’s 40-day stint at Charlton Athletic between 14 November and 24 December 2006 is the shortest, followed by now Kerala Blasters’ manager Rene Meulensteen’s 75 days in charge of Fulham between 2013-’14.
  • Of Crystal Palace managers, Paul Hart’s record of 14 matches in 2014 was the previous lowest for a permanent manager, among the 48 that have taken charge since the club’s inception in 1905.
  • The Dutchman hasn’t had a good time in his last two stints as a club manager. At Inter Milan in 2016, he lasted just 14 matches, winning five of them. His third and only other stint at club level lasted five and a half years at Ajax.

There have been other infamously short managerial stints.

  • Brian Clough’s 44 days in charge of Leeds United is now enshrined in history, having been made into a book and then a movie titled The Damned United. Clough never got along with his predecessor Don Revie and the team that he inherited, while the former was in charge of Derby County, having termed Leeds ‘dirty cheats’. Unsurprisingly, he never got along with his new team and was sacked but would go on to win consecutive European Cups with Nottingham Forest, becoming one of the game’s greatest managers.
  • Palace are no stranger to short reigns. In 1984, Wimbledon manager Dave Bassett agreed in principle to become the London team’s manager but refused to sign a contract and went back to his old club within four days.
  • In July 2016, Argentine manager Marcelo Bielsa was announced as the manager of Lazio. Bielsa, who signed on the 6th, quit on the 8th after citing differences in transfer strategy with the board. 
  • The record surely goes to Leroy Rosenior, of Torquay United. In 2007, Rosenior was hired just as a consortium was poised to take over the club. The group which took over after 10 minutes wanted their own man, Paul Buckle, as manager and Rosenior was let go. Ouch.