With Manchester City picking up the treble last night, I think that Pep Guardiola has cemented his position as the greatest manager of an English football team of all time. Given the money he has had to spend, Guardiola has effectively created a fantasy football team and the style of football his teams play have generally earned the respect and admiration of most football fans. Manchester City have dominated the English game over the last decade and Pep's seven years in control have established a new benchmark, albeit one that has been created with the untold financial backing. I was wondering how this will have impacted on a notional table of the top five greatest managers of English clubs of all time. My thread title is a bit misleading but I would be intrigued to see who people thought were the best English club managers of all time. This is my list:- 1. Pep Guardiola 2. Sir Alex Ferguson 3. Herbert Chapman 4. Arsene Wenger 5. Bill Shankly
1 - Fergie 2 - Clough The rest... All opinions of course but for me the best managers are the ones who can win things as underdogs. As good as City have been under Pep they've not won a single trophy that they've not been favourites for, and none of their achievements are as impressive as Aberdeen's CWC under Fergie or Clough's achievements at Derby & Forest. The most impressive thing about Pep is the consistency he instills in league campaigns imo. I'm not hugely impressed by them winning CL as they should have done it years ago really and they clearly have the biggest and best squad in the world.
Sir Alex achieved the treble with a squad half-full of academy players; Giggs, Beckham, Scholes, P Neville, G Neville, Butt, Brown. And that was during an era when Italian and Spanish football were far superior to the Premier League.
Yeah people often try and compare Fergie taking ages to win CL similar to Pep at City but you can't compare now to the 90s where English clubs were still recovering from the Heysel ban and were miles behind the top clubs, not really becoming regularly competitive again till mid 00s I also agree that United's treble is more impressive due to the amount of academy players involved.
Utd didn't even spend that much, relatively speaking. Between '92/'93 and '02/'03 they were outspent by the likes of Newcastle and Blackburn.
Also, Fergie's first and last Premier League title, were 20 years apart. The amount of times he had to recycle his squad, face different challengers, and yet still come out on top (domestically-speaking at least), is incredible. Pep, by comparison, won his first Prem title in '17/'18. So to match Sir Alex he has to win the league in 2038.
I read somewhere once that in Fergies time at United they were never the biggest spenders in a summer transfer window. Couldn't be arsed to check but it sounds believable with Liverpool, Blackburn and Newcastle spending in the 90s and then Chelsea (and later City) from 2005. Maybe the summer they bought Veron they spent the most? Would be quite remarkable if true though. I still remember people saying Fergie was done when Abramovic came along but he saw them off comfortably in the end.
I agree with the comments abour Ferguson and the gap between him and Guariola is not that great. However, I feel that the style of football Man city can play represents the apogee of the way the game can be played and this is why I would have him in No. 1 position. I would like to have put Clough in the list and maybe he would be 6th. Bob Paisley would also be in the top ten as would Don Revie. However, my list does reflect the managers who have changed football and made it more "modern." For this reason, Wenger's importance cannot be overlooked. I just feel that he radicalised the way players trained and looked at issues such as diet. He was a revolutionary and introduced a lot of ideas we now take for granted. If you could award points for ability and importance, I would say that there is a massive gap between the top 2 and the others and also a similar size gap between my 4 and 5. Hebert Chapman is a bit of a forgotten name these days and had success at both Huddersfield and Arsenal although his career had been tainted by a corruption scandal which let to the disbandment of Leeds City in the early 1920s. He is also the only English manager in my top 5.
Just a couple of times; https://www.football365.com/news/bi...ue-season-chelsea-manchester-united-liverpool The only time in the 90s, was 98/99, the treble-season, which goes to show what he could have achieved if he had spent more. Think Utd got a reputation for spending big, because Fergie loved a marquee signing. Broke the transfer record 7 times. In fairness to Pep, City haven't been biggest spenders since his first season either.
Don’t get me wrong Pep Guardiola is a fantastic manager and just because you have the resources doesn’t mean you are guaranteed success, but he has always been in charge of a top side with access to huge resources. Nothing that he has achieved is on par with Clough winning the European Cup with Nottingham Forest, Ferguson winning a European Trophy with Aberdeen (against Real Madrid in a final) or Mourinho winning the Champions League with Porto. Those managers had to drag their way to the top, Guardiola started at the pinnacle and is in charge of the most expensive squad to have ever existed in World football. Again he is absolutely one of the best, but I just can’t consider him ahead of the other managers I’ve mentioned because he hasn’t performed that level of footballing miracle.
Nice one that's an interesting site, though I count 3 not 2 - I was right on Veron though It also says City were biggest spenders in Pep's first two seasons? And they already had the best squad in the country when he took over which is unlike other great managers.
The only other thing I would say is that he could be (unfairly perhaps) tainted if City are found guilty of all these financial charges. If that happens then for all his brilliance his most successful jobs will be a club who had a ref on their books and another who used secretive payments kept away from the books to flout financial regulations. Which would leave winning the league with Bayern.
Thing with Fergie was the Refs were frightened of him. Does anyone remember the season where no team was awarded a penalty at Old Trafford except Utd? Not to mention Fergie time when Utd were losing.
There is one manager missing from that list whose record speaks for itself: "Statistically, there weren’t many better than me around Europe in terms of aggression, clean sheets, defending your box, balls in the box, expected goals – all those things."
Having said what I had about Fergie he wasn't afraid to give the opposition praise either. When we played Utd at Old Trafford when Poch was In charge Fergie said we were the best team Utd had played against all season.
That last Premier League win for Fergusson was extremely impressive considering how poor that squad was compared to the competition.
