English football treats Stamford Bridge as the benchmark for managerial churn. The continental side that has it beat — all under a single owner — is at it again.

Carlos Corberán was sacked on Sunday, five matches into the season, with Valencia bottom of La Liga on a single point. The club also dismissed its chief football executive, Ron Gourlay, previously at West Brom, on the same afternoon, and explained in a statement that the decision “reflects the club’s intention to begin a new phase for the running of the sporting structure and football operations.” First-team duties passed to Óscar Sánchez, who the previous week had been coaching the reserves at Mestalla.

Corberán is a Valencian, and he arrived on Christmas Eve 2024 on a three-year contract with the club in the relegation places and looking gone. He kept them up — twelfth, in the end — and followed it up last year with a ninth-place finish and a Copa del Rey quarter-final, earning a new deal in June. Three months later, he had taken one point from five games, been beaten 5–0 by Barcelona, and was out.

Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge home (photo by Jacek Kulig)

England has spent twenty years treating Chelsea as the outer limit of boardroom patience — a running joke, a betting market, a shorthand for chaos. Valencia have had it beat for most of a decade, and almost nobody outside Spain has been counting.

So we went looking at how the rest of Europe compares. Lim’s takeover was completed in October 2014, giving twelve full seasons and the start of a thirteenth, and the one rule is that a club must have spent every one of them in its top flight. Relegation resets everything. Forty-two clubs qualify; West Ham and Wolfsburg fall out, both relegated in May, as do Southampton, Genoa and Schalke, who would otherwise dominate any list of this kind.

La Liga | Valencia*

Óscar Sánchez is the eighteenth change of dugout at Valencia under Lim. Eleven of those were permanent appointments — Nuno Espírito Santo, Gary Neville, Pako Ayestarán, Cesare Prandelli, Marcelino, Albert Celades, Javi Gracia, José Bordalás, Gennaro Gattuso, Rubén Baraja, and Corberán. The other seven were caretaker appointments; the 2016–17 campaign alone cycled through four men.

Salvador González, known as Voro, has taken temporary charge of Valencia eight times in his career, six of them on an interim basis since Lim arrived. A former central defender who made nearly 250 appearances for the club, his interim appearances have stretched from as few as a sole game in charge to 25 across the second half of the 2016–17 campaign.

So why the asterisk for Valencia? Over the same span, Sevilla have made thirteen permanent appointments — one for every season, from Unai Emery through to Luis García Plaza in March, more than any club in Europe’s top five leagues. Contrary to expectation, Sevilla’s trophy cabinet indicates success with this model: four Europa League titles over this span, won by three different managers (Emery, Lopetegui, Mendilibar).

Premier League | Churn and championships at Chelsea

Chelsea’s reputation is deserved, but its record is, narrowly, better. Sixteen changes of dugout in the window, between ten permanent hires and six caretaker spells. José Mourinho was in post when it opened and was gone by December 2015, seven months after winning the league by eight points — the sharpest illustration anywhere of the principle that at Chelsea, a title buys you very little time. Antonio Conte won another in 2017 and lasted one further season. A number of noted names — Maurizio Sarri, Frank Lampard, Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter, Mauricio Pochettino, Enzo Maresca and Liam Rosenior — have all had the helm at Stamford Bridge, with Xabi Alonso the latest BlueCo hire.

Roman Abramovich’s famously short leash and ownership antics may have recently cost the club, but ten titles in seven years prior to his departure, including the 2021 Champions League, kept supporters happy.

Unlike Valencia, Chelsea’s six caretaker spells were distributed across five different people — Steve Holland, Guus Hiddink, Bruno Saltor, Lampard in his second and much shorter stint, and Calum McFarlane twice (2026). Abramovich’s departure has mattered little: last season saw Maresca sacked on New Year’s Day, McFarlane for a week, Rosenior until April, and McFarlane again until the end of the season.

Is the Mestalla the true home of managerial upheaval? (photo by Wiki CC)

The rest of the continent

Marseille match Chelsea on sixteen, despite only having finished worse than the top eight of Ligue 1 once in that stretch (13th, 2015–16, when Marcelo Bielsa resigned after the first match). Twelve permanent coaches — among them Rudi Garcia, André Villas-Boas, Jorge Sampaoli and Roberto De Zerbi, with Bruno Genesio now in charge — and four caretakers, including Jacques Abardonado twice and Franck Passi, who held the job on an ‘interim’ basis for six months in 2016.

Udinese are Serie A’s most restless survivors, and the giveaway is not the total but the repetition. Igor Tudor has been appointed twice inside eighteen months, Gabriele Cioffi twice in three years, and Fabio Cannavaro was handed the reins in 2024. They’ve enjoyed more stability of late, with Kosta Runjaic leading them to a 10th-place finish in his second year in charge, their highest finish in over a dozen years.

The Pozzo family, Udine owners since 1986, also run Watford; since purchasing the club in 2012, they’ve made a staggering 27 dugout changes. Watford’s average of roughly one permanent manager per seven months is nearly double that of Valencia.

Augsburg, whose majority stakeholder David Blitzer holds a minority share at Crystal Palace, are the surprise. Ten permanent appointments in thirteen seasons at a club with modest ambition. Their only European campaign in that time, coming off a fifth-place finish in 2015, ended with a round-of-32 defeat to Liverpool. Manuel Baum has had the job twice, most recently since December; so has Markus Weinzierl. Sandro Wagner lasted five months.

Best of luck to Señor Sánchez at Valencia, who will face Alavés, winners of three in their first five, less than 48 hours after his appointment.