Football Manager can be infuriating at times.
When you find yourself in a precarious position but start to get the results needed to begin to save the season, the almighty axe can sometimes come down and strike when you least expect it.
I remember playing one version of Football Manager and after a rather bad start, I had managed to turn things around and made the relegation scrap a big event between a number of sides.
However, the board were less than impressed and decided that although I was starting to pick up positive results, they would sack me. Indeed, I picked up a victory in a must-win game, but then I was sacked simply after.
Slaven Bilic has faced that reality, though, and had much of the football world feeling rather sorry for him after he was dismissed as West Bromwich Albion manager following a draw against Manchester City. He was subsequently replaced by Sam Allardyce after just a few hours.
However, he is not the only one who can be considered to have been treated harshly in the Premier League over the years. There have been a number of managers who have been handed their P45s despite having been able to do well with the resources that they had at the time.
A feature piece by The Sun has outlined a number of other managers to have been treated in the same way that Bilic found himself on the receiving end.
Chelsea appear twice as they got rid of men such as Carlo Ancelotti and Roberto Di Matteo in rather acrimonious ways. The Blues sacked Ancelotti shortly after the final whistle of the 2011 season after finishing second in the league, despite having won a domestic double the year before and the first one ever to have been won by the Stamford Bridge outfit. Di Matteo won the UEFA Champions League as manager but was then dismissed months later as they crashed out of the following season’s group stage.
Claudio Ranieri may have been a Chelsea manager who could have felt aggrieved when he lost his job to Jose Mourinho, however his sacking at Leicester City was certainly harsher. Having led the Foxes to a shock Premier League title, he was sacked around six months later as they were left just above the relegation zone.
Frank de Boer is another manager who could feel as though he was treated unfairly as he lasted just 77 days at Crystal Palace before the club decided to pull the trigger on him. Admittedly, the Eagles did not look very good, however just a month of actual Premier League football as manager before being terminated was a little harsh. Then again, he was replaced with Roy Hodgson and he looks to have things going rather well in south London at the moment.