The Premier League has always had a habit of making managers look either like geniuses or like men who have accidentally wandered into the wrong dugout, with the best of them eventually turning pressure, expectation and expensive squads into something far more lasting.
That is why ranking the greatest managers in Premier League history requires more than counting medals, because winning with Manchester United brings a different weight from rescuing Leicester City from obscurity, while taking Arsenal back to the summit after two decades carries its own kind of managerial currency.
For this ranking, three things matter most: trophies won, longevity and success relative to the club managed, with tactical influence, consistency and the quality of the competition faced also considered.
- 10. Antonio Conte | Chelsea, Tottenham
- 9. Roberto Mancini | Manchester City
- 8. Claudio Ranieri | Chelsea, Leicester City, Fulham, Watford
- 7. Carlo Ancelotti | Chelsea, Everton
- 6. Mikel Arteta | Arsenal
- 5. Jürgen Klopp | Liverpool
- 4. José Mourinho | Chelsea, Manchester United, Tottenham
- 3. Arsène Wenger | Arsenal
- 2. Pep Guardiola | Manchester City
- 1. Sir Alex Ferguson | Manchester United
10. Antonio Conte | Chelsea, Tottenham
Conte’s Premier League career lasted only a few seasons, yet his best season was so forceful that it remains difficult to keep him outside any serious conversation about the competition’s greatest managers.
Chelsea had finished 10th in 2015/16, and Conte inherited a side that had lost its defensive structure and much of the confidence that had carried it to the title only two seasons earlier.
He responded by changing the shape, introducing his preferred back three and eventually producing a Chelsea side that won 30 of 38 league matches, collected 93 points and established a Premier League record for victories in a season at the time.
That title in 2016/17 came after a run of 13 consecutive league victories, while Conte also won the FA Cup the following season before leaving Stamford Bridge.
His Tottenham spell ended without silverware and with another difficult departure, which limits his place here, yet the Chelsea turnaround was too impressive to dismiss, particularly given how quickly he turned tactical changes into results.
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9. Roberto Mancini | Manchester City
The Italian arrived at Manchester City when the club had money, ambition and a growing collection of expensive players, yet still needed someone capable of turning all those ingredients into a serious football team.
He did precisely that, winning the FA Cup in 2011 before delivering City’s first Premier League title the following year, with the championship eventually secured through one of the most ridiculous final days English football has ever produced.
City finished the 2011/12 season on 89 points, level with Manchester United, but their superior goal difference gave them the advantage before Sergio Agüero’s stoppage-time winner against QPR completed the job.
Mancini also deserves credit for giving City a competitive personality during the early years of the Abu Dhabi-backed era, because the club had to learn how to behave like a title contender before Guardiola later turned them into a machine.
His four-year tenure ended in 2013, yet his contribution remains enormous because he helped move Manchester City from ambitious newcomers into English champions.
8. Claudio Ranieri | Chelsea, Leicester City, Fulham, Watford
Ranieri’s Premier League career contains plenty of respectable work, although one season towers above everything else and gives him a place on this list almost by itself.
Leicester City had finished 14th with 41 points in 2014/15 after spending much of the previous campaign fighting relegation, making their rise to the title under Ranieri one of football’s most extraordinary stories.
The Foxes won 23 league matches, lost only three and finished on 81 points, with Arsenal second on 71 and Tottenham third on 70, while Jamie Vardy scored 24 goals during a campaign that seemed to become more improbable every weekend.
The brilliance of Ranieri’s work was not about overwhelming opponents with possession or assembling the deepest squad in England, because Leicester found a brutally effective identity built around pace, compact defending, direct attacking and extraordinary efficiency.
N’Golo Kanté dominated midfield, Riyad Mahrez supplied invention, Vardy terrorised defenders and players such as Wes Morgan, Robert Huth and Danny Simpson became champions in one of the great reminders that football occasionally enjoys ignoring the script.
Ranieri never reproduced that achievement elsewhere in England, which explains why he sits eighth rather than higher, yet Leicester’s 2015/16 title remains one of the greatest managerial achievements in Premier League history.
7. Carlo Ancelotti | Chelsea, Everton
Ancelotti’s Premier League career was surprisingly short for a manager of his stature, although his first season at Chelsea produced enough evidence of his class to make the Italian impossible to overlook.
Chelsea won the 2009/10 Premier League title with 86 points, scoring 103 goals and finishing with a goal difference of +71, while Ancelotti also guided them to the FA Cup for a domestic double.
The attacking numbers were remarkable, with Didier Drogba scoring 29 league goals and Frank Lampard contributing 22, while Chelsea became the first English top-flight team to score more than 100 league goals in a season since Tottenham had done so in 1962/63.
Ancelotti then finished second in 2010/11 before being dismissed, while his later Everton spell never approached the standards he established at Stamford Bridge.
His placement here is therefore based on quality rather than longevity, because very few managers have walked into England and produced a league and FA Cup double during their first campaign.
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6. Mikel Arteta | Arsenal
The Spaniard’s position requires more debate than the names above him because his career is still developing, yet Arsenal’s 2025/26 title changed the conversation around him permanently.
When Arteta replaced Unai Emery in December 2019, Arsenal were drifting away from the standards expected of them, and his early years involved difficult squad decisions, inconsistent league form and the slow construction of a new footballing identity.
The 2020 FA Cup provided his first major trophy, although the larger transformation took several seasons as Arteta moved Arsenal towards a younger, more athletic and tactically demanding side.
Arsenal eventually finished runners-up three times in succession before finally ending their 22-year wait for the Premier League title in 2025/26, finishing on 85 points and seven clear of Manchester City.
Arteta became the 13th manager to win the Premier League and the first to win the competition with a club for which he had previously played in the Premier League.
His 2025/26 campaign also earned him the Manager of the Season award, which placed him alongside the competition’s established elite rather than among promising coaches waiting for their defining achievement.
The reason he sits sixth is not a criticism of his work, because the next few years could push him considerably higher, although longevity still separates him from managers who sustained excellence for 15 or 20 years.
5. Jürgen Klopp | Liverpool
The German international may have won only one Premier League title, yet reducing his Liverpool career to that number would miss the extraordinary level required to compete with Manchester City during the Guardiola era.
Klopp arrived in October 2015 and gradually transformed Liverpool from a talented but inconsistent side into a team capable of producing points totals that would have won the league in most other periods.
Liverpool finished with 97 points in 2018/19 and still lost the title to Manchester City, then returned the following season with 99 points and finally ended the club’s 30-year wait for a top-flight championship.
That 2019/20 side won 32 matches, equalling the Premier League record, and lifted the title with seven matches still remaining, while Klopp’s Liverpool had already won the Champions League the previous season.
Across his Liverpool tenure, Klopp won six major trophies, including the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup, League Cup, UEFA Super Cup and FIFA Club World Cup, while his 60.7 per cent win rate across all competitions remains the highest in Liverpool’s history.
He also created an attacking side built around pressing, movement and devastating transitions, before gradually evolving it into a more controlled team capable of dominating matches in different ways.
Klopp’s relatively short Premier League tenure and single league title keep him fifth, although his two 90-plus-point campaigns make his record look considerably better than the trophy column alone suggests.
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4. José Mourinho | Chelsea, Manchester United, Tottenham
The Special has fondly called arrived in England with the Champions League trophy already in his luggage after Porto’s extraordinary European triumph, then introduced himself to the Premier League with the confidence of a man who had no intention of being a supporting character.
His first Chelsea team won the 2004/05 title with 95 points, losing only once and conceding just 15 goals, a defensive record that remains untouched in the Premier League era.
Chelsea retained the championship in 2005/06, making Mourinho the first foreign manager to win consecutive Premier League titles, before he returned several years later and won another championship with Chelsea in 2014/15.
His English trophy collection also includes three League Cups, an FA Cup and a Europa League with Manchester United, while his 2016/17 United side won three trophies despite finishing sixth in the league.
The Tottenham spell was considerably less memorable, and Mourinho’s later career never reproduced the overwhelming dominance of his first Chelsea period, yet his influence on the Premier League remains enormous.
He arrived at a league dominated by Ferguson and Wenger and immediately forced both clubs to deal with another heavyweight standing across the room.
3. Arsène Wenger | Arsenal
Le Professeur changed the Premier League in ways that cannot be measured entirely through trophies, because his influence reached nutrition, training, recruitment, player development and the technical expectations placed upon elite English football.
He won three Premier League titles with Arsenal, including the 1997/98 and 2001/02 doubles, before producing the most famous campaign of his career with the Invincibles in 2003/04.
Arsenal went through that entire league season unbeaten, eventually extending the run to 49 matches, a Premier League record that still stands and remains one of the hardest achievements in English football to imagine being repeated.
Wenger remained at Arsenal for 22 Premier League seasons, more than any other manager in the competition’s history, and his 828 matches are also a record.
He won seven FA Cups, another record for a manager, while Arsenal finished inside the top two in every season from 1997/98 through 2004/05.
His inability to win another league title after 2004 remains the obvious weakness in his record, although judging Wenger solely through that drought would overlook the scale of what he had already changed.
His greatest Arsenal teams made English football faster, more technical and more sophisticated, while the Invincibles gave the Premier League one of its most enduring footballing myths.
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2. Pep Guardiola | Manchester City
Pep leaves Manchester City with a résumé so enormous that placing him second can feel slightly absurd, yet Ferguson’s longevity gives the Scot the narrow advantage.
Guardiola spent 10 seasons at City, winning six Premier League titles, including four consecutive championships from 2020/21 through 2023/24, while his first title-winning team in 2017/18 became the first Premier League side to reach 100 points.
His City side also won the 2022/23 Treble, adding the Champions League to the Premier League and FA Cup, while his overall City collection reached 20 major trophies before his departure in May 2026.
The final season added another League Cup and FA Cup before City finished second in the Premier League, giving Guardiola two domestic trophies during his farewell campaign.
His influence stretches beyond the trophy cabinet because his positional play, inverted full-backs, goalkeeper involvement and obsession with controlling space have influenced coaches across England and beyond.
Former assistants and players have carried pieces of his football into their own teams, with Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal becoming Premier League champions immediately after Guardiola’s departure, which adds another interesting layer to the City manager’s legacy.
Guardiola leaves English football with six league titles, 20 major trophies and a tactical footprint that will remain visible long after his seat at the Etihad has been occupied by somebody else.
1. Sir Alex Ferguson | Manchester United
Sir Alex Ferguson remains number one because no manager has combined longevity, rebuilding, domestic dominance and European success in the Premier League quite like the Scot did at Manchester United.
Ferguson arrived at Old Trafford in 1986 and stayed until 2013, winning 13 Premier League titles across 21 seasons of the competition and turning Manchester United into the defining English club of the era.
His first Premier League championship came in 1992/93, ending United’s 26-year wait for a top-flight title, while his final one arrived in 2012/13, proving that his ability to rebuild had survived several generations of players and opponents.
Ferguson also won two Champions League titles, five FA Cups and four League Cups, with the 1998/99 Treble becoming one of the most celebrated achievements in English football history.
His Premier League record stands at 528 victories from 810 matches, while his 1,752 points remain a competition record, numbers that become even more striking when you remember that they were accumulated across more than two decades of constant pressure.
Perhaps the most revealing part of his legacy arrived after retirement, because Manchester United have not won another Premier League title since Ferguson’s final championship in 2013.
That does not mean everything United achieved afterwards should be blamed on his absence, although the contrast makes one thing difficult to ignore: Ferguson was not merely managing successful Manchester United teams, he had built an institution capable of repeatedly finding ways to win.
That combination of trophies, longevity, reinvention and dominance places him alone at the top of this list.
