20 Greatest Managers in Premier League History Ranked

The Premier League has had some great managers in recent years. Pep Guardiola stands out as the greatest of his generation, but his dominant Manchester City side has been pushed all the way on a number of occasions, usually by Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, while Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal have also kept them on their toes.

Guardiola is one of only four managers in the Premier League era to have won the league on more than one occasion – so how does he stack up against some of the all-time greats since the league’s 1992 rebrand? We’ve ranked the 20 best managers over the last 32 years of top-flight action…

Ranking factors

• Trophies won
• Longevity
• Success relative to clubs managed

20

Mikel Arteta

Arsenal

Mikel Arteta is still in the early stages of his managerial career but there is little not to like about what the Spaniard is doing at Arsenal. The former Gunners’ midfielder took over at the Emirates following Unai Emery’s sacking in 2019 and won his first trophy as manager a year later, clinching the 2020 FA Cup.

Arteta has dealt with big personalities extremely well during his time in charge, offloading the likes of Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and opting to build his team around younger players. His coaching was highly regarded when he was Pep Guardiola’s assistant at Manchester City and it’s clear that he has improved the vast majority of Arsenal’s players.

19

Gerard Houllier

Liverpool, Aston Villa

Gerard Houllier managed two teams in the Premier League but he is mostly remembered for his time in charge of Liverpool. The Reds finished in the top four of the Premier League in four of the six seasons that Houllier was in charge for between 1998 and 2004.

Houllier’s best season as a manager in England was undoubtedly the 2000-01 campaign, when Liverpool won a cup treble consisting of the FA Cup, the League Cup and the UEFA Cup. Liverpool also won the Community Shield and the UEFA Super Cup in 2001, and Houllier was subsequently named as the manager in UEFA’s Team of the Year.

18

Sam Allardyce

Bolton, Newcastle, Blackburn, West Ham, Sunderland, Crystal Palace, Everton, West Brom, Leeds

Sam Allardyce has managed more Premier League clubs than any other coach, having taken charge of a grand total of nine. The former England manager gained a reputation as a long-ball manager over his time in the top flight but that is far from the truth.

Allardyce was one of the first managers in England to really pay attention to statistics and analytics – something he picked up on during his time as a player for the Tampa Bay Rowdies in the 1980s. Allardyce realised that Americans were generally paying a lot more attention to detail in their sports and, when he became a manager, he decided to do the same.

His stats-based approach may not have led to his teams playing eye-catching football but it certainly led to success on the pitch, with Bolton and West Ham in particular reaping the benefits of his approach.

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17

Kevin Keegan

Newcastle, Manchester City

Kevin Keegan took over at Newcastle in 1992, with the club on the brink of relegation to the third tier of English football. The Magpies avoided the drop and the following season they were promoted to the Premier League as Division One champions. In Newcastle’s first season back in the Premier League, Keegan guided them to a third-place finish, before a sixth-place finish the following campaign.

The 1995-96 season is the campaign that many remember Keegan’s Newcastle for, as they blew a 12-point lead at the top of the table to lose the title to Manchester United. On the way to doing so, Keegan came out with his famous “I would love it if we beat them” comment about Sir Alex Ferguson’s United, which has gone down in Premier League folklore.

16

Sir Bobby Robson

Newcastle United

Sir Bobby Robson is undoubtedly one of the greatest English managers of all time. Robson, who managed the Three Lions between 1982 and 1990, won trophies with Ipswich Town, PSV Eindhoven, Porto and Barcelona but there won’t be many fan-bases that remember him more fondly than Newcastle’s.

Newcastle were bottom of the Premier League when a 66-year-old Robson took over from Ruud Gullit in 1999 but he secured back-to-back mid-table finishes, before achieving Champions League qualification in 2002 and 2003. Newcastle fans fondly remember Robson for implementing an attacking style and bringing joy back to the club after Gullit’s dull, brief tenure.

15

Mauricio Pochettino

Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur, Chelsea

Tottenham made one of the biggest managerial upgrades of all time when they replaced Tim Sherwood with Argentine boss Mauricio Pochettino in 2014. Pochettino may be yet to win a trophy in England but that doesn’t make his achievements any less impressive.

Spurs recorded top-three finishes in three successive seasons between 2016 and 2018, while also reaching the final of the Champions League in 2019. His most recent spell in the Premier League was a topsy-turvy spell at Chelsea, with the Argentine leaving after just one term at Stamford Bridge. Nevertheless, he remains one of the better managers in the league’s rich history.

14

Manuel Pellegrini

Manchester City, West Ham United

The last man to manage Manchester City who isn’t called Pep Guardiola, Manuel Pellegrini is the lowest-ranked title-winning manager on this list. Pellegrini may have won the league in his first season in charge but his tenure was largely unremarkable, although he was the first manager to take City deep in the Champions League, guiding them to the semi-finals in his final season in charge.

Pellegrini was always intended by City to be a stop-gap before Guardiola’s arrival and he fulfilled his purpose, helping the team to transition towards the remarkable period of success we are currently seeing.

13

Harry Redknapp

West Ham, Portsmouth, Southampton, Tottenham, QPR

Harry Redknapp’s first job in the Premier League was with West Ham, who he joined as boss in 1994. Redknapp played a key role in promoting a host of talented youngsters, with the likes of Michael Carrick, Joe Cole, Rio Ferdinand and Frank Lampard all emerging during his time in charge.

Redknapp, who has managed 641 games in the Premier League, also enjoyed a fruitful spell at Portsmouth, winning the FA Cup with the Fratton Park club in 2008. Tottenham benefitted from Redknapp’s management too, qualifying for the Champions League for the first time in 2010 and playing some brilliant football during his four years in charge.

12

David Moyes

Everton, Manchester United, Sunderland, West Ham United

David Moyes’ second spell in charge of West Ham may not have ended the way he would have liked but the way he has revived his career in recent years has been remarkable. Moyes spent 11 years in charge of Everton, delivering top-half finishes in all but two of his seasons in charge, but the way his move to Manchester United panned out threatened to ruin his reputation.

A spell at Real Sociedad ended with him being sacked in 2015 before Sunderland were relegated under him in 2017. Moyes carried out a survival job for West Ham on a short-term deal in 2018 and returned permanently in 2019, replacing Manuel Pellegrini. Moyes helped to deliver the greatest sporting moment of many West Ham fans’ lives in 2023 as they won the Europa Conference League.

11

Rafa Benitez

Liverpool, Chelsea, Newcastle, Everton

Rafa Benitez delivered Liverpool’s greatest moment of the 21st century prior to the Jurgen Klopp era, leading them to Champions League glory in 2005, while he also won the FA Cup and the UEFA Super Cup during his time in charge at Anfield.

Chelsea fans never fully took to Benitez when he took over on an interim basis in 2012, but he still delivered the Europa League to the Stamford Bridge club. Benitez was a popular appointment at Newcastle in 2016 and enjoyed a good spell there, but disagreements with Mike Ashley saw him leave the club. His appointment by Everton in 2021 was a strange one given his ties to Liverpool, and that move didn’t work out at all.

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10

Kenny Dalglish

Blackburn, Newcastle, Liverpool

Kenny Dalglish won three league titles as Liverpool manager in the 1980s, and were this not a list based on the Premier League era, the Glaswegian would be much higher up on it. Dalglish does still have a Premier League winner’s medal from his managerial career, though, having guided Blackburn to the crown in 1995.

Dalglish took charge of Blackburn in 1991 while they were in the second division and achieved promotion in 1992, ensuring Rovers were part of the inaugural Premier League seasons. Dalglish could not replicate the success he enjoyed at Ewood Park with Newcastle and a lengthy break followed before he returned to Liverpool in 2011, where he won the League Cup.

9

Antonio Conte

Chelsea, Tottenham

Antonio Conte’s disciplined approach didn’t reap rewards at Tottenham but it certainly did at Chelsea. Chelsea were coming off the back of an awful 2015-16 season, in which they finished 10th, when Conte arrived at Stamford Bridge and he sparked an immediate turnaround in their fortunes, guiding them to a brilliant title win which saw them end the season on 93 points.

One of the greatest Italian managers of all time, Conte’s fractious personality is a huge contributing factor to him not lasting very long at any of the clubs he manages and he was gone a year later, despite Chelsea winning the FA Cup in his second term.

8

Roberto Mancini

Manchester City

Italian boss Roberto Mancini was the man at the helm when Manchester City ended their 35-year wait for a trophy in 2011, lifting the FA Cup with a victory over Stoke City in the final at Wembley. City had knocked out Manchester United in the semi-finals, and 12 months later they lifted silverware at United’s expense once more, clinching the Premier League title in dramatic fashion on the final day of the season.

Mancini was at City for four years between 2009 and 2013, and was the man who really turned the Blues into a force following Sheikh Mansour’s 2008 takeover.

7

Claudio Ranieri

Chelsea, Leicester, Fulham, Watford

Claudio Ranieri masterminded the unlikeliest title win of all time, taking Leicester from relegation favourites to Premier League champions in 2016. Ranieri’s appointment by the Foxes in 2015 raised eyebrows among many after his predecessor Nigel Pearson was sacked, despite helping Leicester avoid the drop the previous season.

Jamie Vardy, Riyad Mahrez and N’Golo Kante were the stars of a team which also included players that many would class as Premier League also-rans, like Danny Simpson and Robert Huth. Ranieri knitted his squad together brilliantly and the end result was a team that ousted the likes of Arsenal and Tottenham to glory.

6

Carlo Ancelotti

Chelsea, Everton

Carlo Ancelotti may not have won any of his many European Cups while managing a team in England but he did manage a league and FA Cup double during his time in charge of Chelsea. Ancelotti became the Chelsea manager in 2009 and his first season in charge saw the Blues break countless scoring records on their way to the league crown.

Chelsea scored 103 league goals all season and ended the campaign with a goal difference of +71 – both of these were Premier League records before Manchester City’s 2017-18 Centurions season. Ancelotti’s second season in charge saw Chelsea finish second but he was sacked at the end of it by the notoriously trigger-happy Roman Abramovich.

5

Jurgen Klopp

Liverpool

We’re into the top five now and Jurgen Klopp is the obvious choice for this spot. By far the greatest manager to only get his hands on one league crown, Klopp transformed Liverpool from perennial underachievers in the league as they finally ended their 30-year wait for a title in 2020.

Liverpool also recorded a couple of second-place finishes with 90+ points tallies, while there has been success in other competitions too. Liverpool won the Champions League in 2019 and also finished as runners-up in 2018 and 2022, while they won both the FA Cup and League Cup in 2022, as well as the League Cup again in 2024. A truly incredible term for the now-retired coach.

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4

Jose Mourinho

Chelsea, Manchester United, Tottenham

Until Pep Guardiola arrived in England, Jose Mourinho was the only manager other than Sir Alex Ferguson to win back-to-back Premier League titles. The Special One arrived at Chelsea in 2004 after winning the Champions League with Porto and immediately set about establishing himself as the best manager in the world.

Chelsea were without peer on a domestic level between 2004 and 2006, and Mourinho also won two League Cups and an FA Cup during his first spell in charge of the Blues. Mourinho returned to Chelsea in 2013 and guided them to another league crown in the 2014-15 campaign. The Portuguese won the Europa League and the League Cup with Manchester United but his spell with Spurs was a forgettable one.

3

Arsene Wenger

Arsenal

Mourinho once called Arsene Wenger a “specialist in failure”, but while Wenger did not win a league crown beyond 2004, there is no doubting his tactical influence on the English game. Wenger’s Arsenal were known for their brilliant playing style and they won three titles in seven years between 1998 and 2004, finishing inside the top two in every season between 1997-98 and 2004-05. He also was responsible for creating one of the greatest teams in Premier League history, the Invincibles.

Wenger has also won more FA Cups than any manager in history, hoisting the cup on a record seven occasions. Arsenal have never quite conquered Europe but Wenger did take them to the final in 2006, where they were beaten by Barcelona.

2

Pep Guardiola

Manchester City

Were it not for the longevity of the man in top spot, Pep Guardiola would probably be the number one. Guardiola has changed the way football is played at the top level, influencing a number of young coaches across the world who want to replicate the Catalan’s style.

When Guardiola arrived in the Premier League, his doubters said it would not be possible to dominate England’s domestic league as Guardiola had previously dominated La Liga and the Bundesliga with Barcelona and Bayern Munich respectively. Guardiola has made a mockery of that idea, winning six league titles in eight seasons. There have also been a Champions League, two FA Cups, four League Cups, a UEFA Super Cup and the Club World Cup.

1

Sir Alex Ferguson

Manchester United

In terms of the longevity of his success at a single club, there will never be another manager like Sir Alex Ferguson. With 49 trophies, he is the most decorated manager of all time, and 13 of those trophies are Premier League titles. Ferguson also won two Champions Leagues, five FA Cups and four League Cups, and he was named the world’s best coach on two occasions, in 1999 and 2008.

Ferguson’s United won the league more times than they didn’t across a period spanning more than two decades, and United’s downfall since his 2013 retirement shows just how important he was to United’s success during the 1990s and 2000s.

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