When Guus Hiddink shakes hands with Eric Black on the touchline at Villa Park on Saturday, it will be the meeting of two men who know their days are numbered.
Both are in for the short-haul, and will relinquish their duties at the season's end, and neither can really point to any serious objective outstanding for the final stretch of the term.
Both the Blues and the Villains have suffered calamitous campaigns, to varying degrees, and managerial turmoil is just one of the things that goes with that.
Chelsea, serial employers of the caretaker, are on their seventh temporary managerial spell of the last decade.
Just take that in for a second.
Avram Grant (54 games), Ray Wilkins (1), Guus Hiddink (22), Roberto Di Matteo (21 as caretaker), Rafael Benitez (48), Steve Holland (1), and Hiddink again (19) have between them ensured that the nameplate on the Cobham manager's office has been continually rewritten.
But, take a look at the honours they have won in the process of occupying that magma-fueled hot-seat: two FA Cups, a Europa League and, lest we forget, a glistening Champions League trophy.
This season will be different, however, with Hiddink's second spell now guaranteed to end without silverware.
When he was appointed, I asked a well-placed Chelsea source how he might be styled: 'caretaker', or perhaps 'interim'?
There was a little laugh: “Just manager. We tried 'interim' before, and the last fella wasn't keen on it.”
But caretaker he is, and like Black he is now a caretaker without targets.
While Hiddink has taken to saying in recent weeks that it was his number one objective upon appointment to avoid relegation, something now done at Chelsea, Black can hardly be expected to achieve that with Villa.
Chelsea cannot relegate the second city's first team on Saturday; but Hiddink, with his tool cupboard at the ready, can certainly hammer the penultimate nail into the coffin.
If Chelsea are specialists in the appointment of caretakers, then Black is a specialist in the role itself.
This is his fifth stint as a stand-in boss, across five different clubs over nine years.
It's not that he is a journeyman caretaker, but more a case of him being a valued assistant boss who continually seems to end up holding the keys to the lawnmower.
In that time, he has fleetingly manned the dugout at Birmingham, Sunderland, Blackburn and Rotherham, before donning the brown overalls at Villa Park.
And his record over that period is one that might not be pushed to the top of his CV: played nine, won two (both at Blackburn).
Villa, as a club, are also not unfamiliar with the concept of the caretaker.
In the last decade, they have handed playground-sweeping duties to Kevin MacDonald (twice – in 2010 and 2015). And, in a move unique to the realm of caretakerdom, they even managed to appoint two temporary bosses concurrently with the same name: the unrelated Scott and Andy Marshall in February last year.
Regardless of what happens in the 90 minutes that follow his introduction to Hiddink, little about this season will change for either man.
Villa will be relegated. Chelsea will finish mid-table.
And, with both clubs looking to appoint new men at the top for the new season, it seems improbable that the Boards who do the selecting will fail to line-up a handy caretaker – to wait in the wings for when it all goes wrong yet again.
