\n<\/p>\n
With Pep Guardiola set to depart Man City after a stunning decade of success, we find ourselves considering an impossible question: who are the top 10 Premier League managers of all time?<\/p>\n
Basically an impossible question to answer, isn\u2019t it? So many factors, so many criteria you could give more or less importance if you wanted. Basically not worth even attempting it. Certainly nobody sensible would do so.<\/p>\n
Anyway, here\u2019s the top 10 Premier League managers of all time. And if you want stats instead, that top 10 is here<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Again, it\u2019s how you measure it, isn\u2019t it? If you were doing 10 managers who\u2019d had the best one-off seasons there would be no Moyes in there. But in terms of managers who define Our League over the last three decades, Moyes is right up there. Only the Big Two have taken charge of more Premier League games than Moyes and, while there\u2019s no point pretending it\u2019s all been good times for the Scot, it would be just as daft to pretend it\u2019s all been a sh*tshow as well.<\/p>\n Better managers than Moyes would have struggled with the sheer scale of replacing Ferguson at Manchester United \u2013 look at Unai Emery at Arsenal for further evidence of a similar issue here \u2013 but he made Everton into something they hadn\u2019t been since the 80s and haven\u2019t been since: a consistent top-six team.<\/p>\n What he did at Goodison was already impressive at the time but only more so in hindsight, and you\u2019d have to have a heart of stone not to enjoy the success he made of his second stint at West Ham. He took the Hammers to sixth and then seventh in successive Premier League seasons during an era of Big Six dominance, and then landed the club\u2019s first trophy in over 40 years.<\/p>\n And then back to Everton to give them a settled if ultimately underwhelming and deeply Moyes first season in a new stadium<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n A lot of the above applies here too, but with knobs on. Because Redknapp built some brilliant sides at several of those clubs. He took West Ham to fifth, kept Portsmouth up, went and took Southampton down, kept Portsmouth up again, won the FA Cup \u2013 he remains the last English manager to win a major pot \u2013 and then took Tottenham to the Champions League having taken over with the club in a dire position. Alas, the specifics of that position are lost to the ages because nobody ever mentioned them. Suffice to say it was a very low number of points for the number of games played.<\/p>\n Regardless of the messiness of the ending at Chelsea, his work at Southampton and especially Tottenham merits a place even though \u2013 and not a lot of people know this \u2013 he never won any trophies here.<\/p>\n That Spurs side was mint. The 2016\/17 runners-up weren\u2019t quite the best team never to win the title<\/strong> but they were definitely our favourites.<\/p>\n His spell at Chelsea was a chaotic mess, but the blame for that lies elsewhere. We still think he\u2019ll be back at Spurs one day. We\u2019re still not at all sure whether it\u2019s the best idea ever or the worst \u2013 only that it\u2019s definitely one of those two extremes.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Ignore the Everton bit, to be honest. That was quite rubbish. But he did better than most people remember in his brief time at Chelsea and, more importantly, managed the extraordinary trick of being beloved by the fans of both Liverpool and Newcastle \u2013 the two most indulged fanbases in the game. So, you know, he must have done something right when not doing press conferences about FACTS or doing magic tricks that make on-screen graphics appear. You\u2019ve all seen the clip.<\/p>\n He also won the Champions League, quite famously. That\u2019s definitely good.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n We were going to say he\u2019s a divisive figure but that\u2019s not quite true. Pretty much everyone outside Arsenal is sick of him and his oft-errant nonsense. Nothing sends us Full Keysey like the sight of Mikel Arteta yards out of his technical area and harrying wingers and full-backs on the touchline. Get back, quite literally, in your box.<\/p>\n What he\u2019s done, though, is make Arsenal great again. It didn\u2019t look possible \u2013 for him or anyone else \u2013 for an extended period of time. But he dragged a club listing towards mid-table out of their slumbers, made them first competitive in the top six again before swiftly moving on to title challenges.<\/p>\n There are legitimate questions to be asked about how helpful his manic touchline (and we do mean touchline literally here) energy is to the Gunners in the white-hot heat of the title battles where they\u2019ve come up short, but there\u2019s no denying the man has done something spectacular to get them there.<\/p>\n Scores points too for the way he and his team have adapted. Having decided he couldn\u2019t take down Man City by just being a facsimile of his mentor Pep Guardiola\u2019s teams, Arteta has leant fully into his Diego Simeone dark side with magnificent and p*ss-boiling results.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u2018Only one Premier League title\u2019 has been enough for us to dismiss the claims of plenty managers here, but it\u2019s always been a curious stick with which to beat the obviously excellent Klopp.<\/strong> Most obviously, that \u2018one Premier League title\u2019 was the only one Liverpool had ever managed to win and ended a 30-year title drought for England\u2019s second most successful football club which was and is quite a big deal. His team did then win a second title without him, in a season in which all competition melted away.<\/p>\n More importantly, though, Klopp achieved his title \u2013 and a Champions League crown for good measure \u2013 in direct competition with the most dominant team and coach the PL era has ever witnessed.<\/p>\n Before Mikel Arteta\u2019s Arsenal, nobody other than Klopp\u2019s Liverpool had even been able to live with Pep\u2019s City. Whenever Liverpool have struggled, all other runners-up have been distant, never-in-contention stragglers.<\/p>\n Klopp\u2019s teams at their best also play a ferociously, joyously watchable style of football and we make no apology for making aesthetic decisions here. We have great admiration for the clinical brilliance of Guardiola\u2019s City but given the choice we\u2019d rather sit and watch Klopp\u2019s team at their best than Pep\u2019s.<\/p>\n The heavy metal football of the mentality monsters frankly saved the Premier League from some extremely dull processions over recent years and for that we should all be grateful.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Everyone\u2019s favourite emo manager may have blotted his copybook a touch at Manchester United and especially Spurs, by which point his schtick had long since descended into a grim and joyless self-parody.<\/p>\n Still managed to get United to second place, though, which is as good as anyone else has managed post-Ferg, but it\u2019s for his Chelsea years that he gets his place here. We should almost ignore what came after those two spells, because there should be no forgetting just how sensationally good he was. Manchester United and Arsenal had a cosy if hate-driven duopoly at the top of the Premier League when Mourinho came along and blew all that to bits.<\/p>\n His teams set records that looked set to last and last until Guardiola and Klopp came along with their nonsense, but even now no team has been as hard to break down as Mourinho\u2019s Chelsea at their very best. Won three Premier League titles, doesn\u2019t like to talk about it.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Arguably the most significant figure in turning the modern Premier League into what it is today. Without Wenger\u2019s 20-year reign at Arsenal the first 15 years of Barclays would have been even more dominated by Ferguson\u2019s all-conquering United. Having easily swatted away less capable challengers like Kevin Keegan, finally here was a worthy adversary for the greatest manager of them all.<\/p>\n As well as inventing pasta and professionalism and convincing players eight pints of mild was not perhaps the ideal big-match preparation, Wenger also transformed the whole ethos of a gigantic football club in ways that persist to this day. To younger football fans it must be genuinely baffling to learn that Arsenal were wildly successful in the late 80s and early 90s but were infamous for doing so with unappetising route-one football and relentless, unimpeachable defending. One-nil to the Arsenal and all that.<\/p>\n Wenger totally changed what \u2018The Arsenal Way\u2019 meant with a team that was still built from the rock-solid defensive foundations of those earlier, greyer Arsenal sides, but was now filled with startling attacking talent doing quite glorious things. Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp, Robert Pires, Freddie Ljungberg and co came to define what Arsenal were about but it was the steel of Patrick Vieira in midfield that truly completed the picture.<\/p>\n Great at the back, brilliant in midfield and thrilling in attack. It\u2019s a mystery that only once did they manage to go a whole season unbeaten, frankly.<\/p>\n Wenger\u2019s later years at Arsenal were less successful, and even though he was largely right about the merits and level of achievement involved in constantly finishing fourth, it did make him a slight figure of fun, which is a shame.<\/p>\n As is the fact he\u2019s decided to lean into that by spending his retirement attempting to completely destroy his professorial reputation by coming up with absurdly stupid \u2018solutions\u2019 to the offside rule. But he was great once, and for an extended period of time.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The only truly big decision at the top end of this list is which way round to put Wenger and Guardiola. There is no doubt Guardiola has significant advantages Wenger never enjoyed \u2013 unimaginable wealth instead of just significant wealth, Manchester United being sh*t instead of one of the all-time great club sides ever assembled, and so forth \u2013 but the scale and totality of his dominance really is extraordinary.<\/p>\n It was six titles in seven years after a season or two spent finding his feet, with the only team to deny him the title in that time an outrageously good Liverpool one that had been near-perfect but still unsuccessful the year before and simply stepped it up another level until the title was secured.<\/p>\n Guardiola roared back and was only stopped once again by a Liverpool side fuelled by the fumes of the Klopp years. Now he is about to disappear over the hill<\/strong> out of Manchester to a chorus of people claiming he was overrated. Sorry but bollocks.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Nobody enjoys wilful, performative contrarianism more than us but it would take a level that even we\u2019re not truly comfortable with to put anyone other than Ferguson top of this particular list.<\/p>\n Quite possibly the greatest manager who ever lived, he won 13 Premier League titles and bestrode the first two decades of the league\u2019s existence. Wenger and Mourinho gave him pause, but he ultimately saw off all-comers and remains the master of mind games. Keegan and Benitez were the two to most visibly and infamously combust in the glare of Ferguson\u2019s spotlight, but they weren\u2019t alone.<\/p>\n Built at least two genuinely all-time great United sides and for perhaps his best trick then won the title in his final season with what was, frankly, a deeply ordinary one. They have never come close to winning it since despite a couple of distant second-place finishes and are once again at the foothills of a fresh rebuild under a new manager with the outlandish aim of getting anywhere even close to the success of those Ferguson years.<\/p>\n There is something undeniably great about Ferguson being at least partly responsible for what is now well above a decade in the (relative) wilderness. He did salt the earth a bit with the squad he left behind, and his endorsement of the really quite obviously unsuited David Moyes set United inexorably down the current benighted road.<\/p>\n And let\u2019s not forget that all the ownership unpleasantness United have endured over that time is also due at least in some small part to Ferguson and a disagreement over horse semen.<\/p>\n But let\u2019s also not forget that for 20 years, finishing above Ferguson\u2019s United basically meant winning the league. They were brilliant, they were rebuilt overnight, and they were brilliant again. If they weren\u2019t there, you could be absolutely certain they were thereabouts. And he gave us the concept of \u2018Fergie Time\u2019 which will outlive us all.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n10) David Moyes (Everton, West Ham, Sunderland, Manchester United)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
9) Harry Redknapp (West Ham, Portsmouth, Southampton, Tottenham, QPR)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
8) Mauricio Pochettino (Southampton, Tottenham, Chelsea)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
7) Rafa Benitez (Liverpool, Chelsea, Newcastle, Everton)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
6) Mikel Arteta (Arsenal)<\/h2>\n
5) Jurgen Klopp (Liverpool)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
4) Jose Mourinho (Chelsea, Manchester United, Tottenham)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
3) Arsene Wenger (Arsenal)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
2) Pep Guardiola (Manchester City)<\/strong><\/h2>\n
1) Sir Alex Ferguson (Manchester United)<\/strong><\/h2>\n