Mark Hughes has been sacked by Queens Park Rangers a day before their Premier League visit to Manchester United.
QPR have not won a league game all season and were last week comprehensively beaten 3-1 at Loftus Road by fellow relegation strugglers Southampton. Mark Bowen and Eddie Niedzwiecki will take charge of the United game tomorrow.
Harry Redknapp is the favourite to replace the beleaguered Welshman, who said in May this year "As far as I'm concerned, we will never be in this situation again while I am manager," after QPR avoided relegation by virtue of Bolton Wanderers' failure to beat Stoke City on the final day of the season.
QPR said in a statement: "The circumstances we find ourselves in have left the Board of Directors with very little choice but to make a change."
Hughes replaced the sacked Neil Warnock in January on a two-and-a-half-year deal with the Rs languishing in 17th in the table and oversaw six league victories, with notable wins against Liverpool, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur.
QPR have not won a league game all season
Having consolidated the club's Premier League status, the club brought in 13 players in the summer, including Júlio César, Esteban Granero, Ji-Sung Park and Junior Hoilett. However the Rs have failed to stop the rot which set in on the opening day of the campaign when they were thrashed 5-0 at home by Swansea City.
This is the second time Hughes has lost his job after he was sacked by Manchester City in December 2009 and his career is now in danger of fading into obscurity.
The 49-year-old came close to leading Wales to their first major tournament since the 1958 World Cup when they were beaten in the Euro 2004 play-offs by Russia before he left to manage Blackburn Rovers in September 2004.
Mark Hughes Career In Pictures
Rovers excelled under Hughes, finishing 6th, 10th and 7th in his three full seasons in charge at Ewood Park, but he quit to join City in June 2008, three months before the club was taken over by the Abu Dhabi United Group.
After his dismissal at Eastlands Hughes joined Fulham in July 2010 on a season-long contract as the Cottagers finished eighth, but left the club, stating “I felt my ambition for where I wanted to take the club was not matched.”
Hughes, who asked for a bigger desk at Fulham and had builders knock down the adjoining wall and extend it, replete with a new computer and leather chair, may now struggle to find a new seat reserved for him.