While few managers expect to get anywhere near Sir Alex Ferguson's 27 years as Manchester United manager, the events of the decade since his retirement show just how perilous Premier League jobs have become.
The Scot called it a day on May 8, 2013, having led United to what is still the most recent of their Premier League titles. "The decision to retire is one that I have thought a great deal about and one that I have not taken lightly," he said at the time.
In the 10 years since, Premier League clubs have made more than 100 permanent managerial appointments and countless more in caretaker or interim capacities. Naturally, Mirror Football has taken the step of compiling a full and comprehensive ranking.
Just to make sure this doesn't get entirely out of hand, we've put in a few ground rules. First off, we're not including the managers currently in Premier League jobs - things change quickly in football, and doing that could make us look very stupid (stupider?) very soon.
We're also only including those appointed when their team was in the Premier League. If you've come looking for the likes of Nuno at Wolves and Marcelo Bielsa at Leeds, that's why they're not here.
Finally, no caretaker or interim appointments unless it resulted in them getting the job permanently. Our apologies to *checks notes* Mike Jackson and *re-checks notes* Freddie Ljungberg? Really? Huh, so he did.
What have we got right and wrong? Have your say in the comments section
And so, without further ado, here is our definitive ranking of the 91 (ninety-one!) permanent managers to come and go since Fergie called it quits. Read it before someone else gets sacked and it's suddenly out of date.
91. Jan Siewert ( Huddersfield, appointed January 2019)
Bet you thought the guy who lost every game would be last. Guess again.
Siewert took a hopeless team sitting bottom of the league and found a way to make them worse. Five points from 15 games, and only nine goals scored, while the 'just give him a full pre-season' argument fell flat within a month of Huddersfield's first post-relegation season.
90. Frank de Boer ( Crystal Palace, June 2017)
You got lucky, Frank. Not on the pitch, obviously, we're just talking about your position on this list.
89. Nathan Jones ( Southampton, November 2022)
We'll always remember that interview where he said he could have "married a nice Welsh girl". It may surprise you to learn Jones' wife is actually Welsh.
88. Neil Adams (Norwich, April 2014)
He was certainly there. We can be sure of that part.
87. Remi Garde (Aston Villa, November 2015)
Garde won some games, lifting Villa from 20th to, well, still 20th. He then lost six in a row, and might be lower if his temporary successor didn't lose six of seven after that.
86. John Carver ( Newcastle, January 2015)
John Carver, self-professed best coach in the Premier League, also won some games. He also managed to take Newcastle from 11th, 13 points clear of the drop with 11 games left, to needing a final day victory to survive.
85. Chris Ramsey (QPR, February 2015)
That QPR team probably shouldn't have got promoted in the first place. Ramsey, along with predecessor Harry Redknapp (appointed a few months before Fergie's retirement) showed why.
84. Steve McClaren (Newcastle, June 2015)
He spent quite a bit by Newcastle standards, didn't he? We'd love to give him credit for two of his players showing up for a game wearing tuxes, mostly because there isn't much else to give him credit for.
83. Alan Pardew (West Brom, November 2017)
We'll always have the taxi story. Would West Brom have survived with no manager instead of Pardew for those few months? You know what, maybe.
82. Paul Lambert (Stoke, January 2018)
I'll hold my hand up here, I thought Lambert was a shrewd appointment, especially after some of his Villa achievements with a young and cobbled together squad. You probably need a better return of two wins from 15 if you want to stay up, though.
81. Felix Magath ( Fulham, February 2014)
At least it was funny. No, not if you were a fan, I suppose, fine.
80. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer ( Cardiff, January 2014)
Remember when people wrote articles about how Fergie players would become good managers because they learned from the best? Turns out you need to learn more lessons than 'sign a Norwegian lad from Molde and hope he does the business for you'.
79. Dean Smith (Norwich, November 2021)
A real damning indictment on the rest of this list that there are more than 10 people below him.
78. Roy Hodgson ( Watford, January 2022)
A real damning indictment on the rest of this list that there are more than 11 people below him.
77. Rene Meulensteen (Fulham, December 2013)
Bumped him up a few spots because that 2-2 with Man Utd was very funny. That was him and not Magath, right? Yes? Good.
76. David Moyes (Sunderland, July 2016)
They scored direct from a corner that one time. Also the weird John Terry thing was at least memorable.
75. Alan Irvine (West Brom, June 2014)
Weird that he was appointed to begin with, really. Don't try to claim you remember any of his games in charge. The Nicolas Anelka 'Quenelle' one was under caretaker Keith Downing, before you ask.
74. Bob Bradley (Swansea, October 2016)
Look, it had a 5-4 win. How many other managers can say that?
73. Claudio Ranieri ( Fulham, November 2018)
Another for the 'why did the manager or the club think this was a good idea?' pile. Fulham went down in 2019 because they made the squad too weird in the summer, and Ranieri somehow made it even weirder
72. Quique Sanchez Flores ( Watford, September 2019)
Sanchez Flores' Watford had 31 shots in one game against Arsenal. Thirty-one! No, they didn't win.
71. Javi Gracia (Leeds, February 2023)
He averaged a point per game. We're as surprised as you.
70. Claudio Ranieri ( Watford, October 2021)
At least he rid the Premier League of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and gave us the bizarre entertainment of Ralf Rangnick. Might have done better if Ismaila Sarr hadn't been injured for ages.
69. Sam Allardyce (West Brom, December 2020)
Allardyce's West Brom won 5-2 away at Chelsea but also lost 5-0 at home to Leeds so it's impossible to say how good or bad they were.
68. Mike Phelan (Hull, July 2016)
Climbs places on the basis that two of his players scored a joint bicycle kick goal. Loses them based on the other results.
67. Nigel Pearson (Watford, December 2019)
Ended Liverpool's unbeaten run, which was no mean feat. Did still get relegated, though (okay, technically Hayden Mullins was caretaker by then, but come on.
66. Pepe Mel (West Brom, January 2014)
He seemed like a nice man, didn't he?
65. Carlos Carvalhal (Swansea, December 2017)
Beat Liverpool and Arsenal but also allowed Huddersfield - Huddersfield! - 30 shots in a single game. The duality of man.
64. Nuno Espirito Santo ( Tottenham, June 2021)
It remains preposterous that Nuno's Spurs beat Manchester City. Some incredible highs and lows for a 10-game spell, but why was he there?
63. Mark Hughes ( Southampton, March 2018)
Yes, he kept them up, but it felt almost accidental
62. Mauricio Pellegrino (Southampton, June 2017)
Pellegrino and Hughes might deserve equal credit for that season. Draw your own conclusions.
61. Rafa Benitez ( Everton, June 2021)
The win against Arsenal was fun, right? Right?
60. Frank Lampard (Everton, January 2022)
The win against Man Utd was fun, right? Right?
59. Walter Mazzarri (Watford, July 2016)
Not even Watford fans remember Walter Mazzarri managing Watford. And he was there longer than a lot of their other managers.
58. Neil Warnock ( Crystal Palace, August 2014)
Feels like he both rejoined and left by accident. Very hard to separate it from that Ian Holloway spell, on reflection.
57. David Moyes (Man Utd, July 2013)
Thirty-four managers did a worse job than Moyes at United, based on our ranking. Let us show our working.
First, it was always going to be impossible to adequately replace Ferguson. Second, it's not like they won the league after him, or even came especially close. Third, that Olympiacos game was pretty good, actually. Fourth, have you seen who's below him?
56. Graham Potter ( Chelsea, September 2022)
Moyes at Man Utd II: Electric Boehlyloo.
55. Paul Clement (Swansea, January 2017)
Three different Premier League managers have signed Jordan Ayew. If we can say one thing about Paul Clement, it's that he was absolutely one of them.
54. Francesco Guidolin (Swansea, January 2016)
Got sacked on his birthday, just like Gracia at Leeds. Feels unnecessarily cruel.
53. Dick Advocaat (Sunderland, March 2015)
Grace Robertson has written about the Sunderland Vortex, and Advocaat might be the best use case. Responsible for splashing millions on Jeremain Lens just weeks before losing his job and leaving the Black Cats burdened. How's that for foresight? Yes it's a 'parts of the eye' joke, shut up.
52. Gus Poyet (Sunderland, October 2013)
The second best example of the Sunderland Vortex. In Poyet's defence, that 8-0 defeat against Southampton was extremely funny for everyone else.
51. Jesse Marsch (Leeds, February 2022)
Somehow epitomised the Sunderland Vortex despite not even managing Sunderland.
50. Claude Puel ( Leicester, October 2017)
If you were asked to name managers with multiple Premier League clubs on their CV, you'd get through a lot of names before landing on Puel. At least he did sign Youri Tielemans.
49. Scott Parker (Fulham, February 2019)
Most of his good work was in the Championship, in fairness. The end of the 18-19 season was fun, though, in a 'kid poking everyone in his class with a compass because he knows he's getting expelled anyway' sense.
48. Steve Bruce (Newcastle, July 2019)
Did he do a good job? No. Did he finish around 40-45 points a bunch of times without anyone really remembering the wins? Sure.
47. Marco Silva (Hull, January 2017)
You might question the wisdom of putting a relegated manager around the halfway point, but we can't stress enough how bad that Hull squad was before he arrived (see the entry for Phelan, M.). Once brought on Shaun Maloney as a substitute for Andrea Ranocchia, which is the sort of nonsense all managers should aspire to.
46. Garry Monk (Swansea, February 2014)
Still think he looks a bit like the guy who plays Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball. Makes sense that he managed in a coastal city.
45. David Moyes ( West Ham, November 2017)
This is the first spell, not the second one. We can't stress that enough. Still trying to understand that Jordan Hugill signing.
44. Bruno Lage (Wolves, June 2021)
It was nice to be able to say 'Lage and in charge' for a while. Then he lost the dressing room.
43. Steven Gerrard (Aston Villa, November 2021)
Look, it was nice to see Philippe Coutinho smile for a bit after *gestures at everything*.
42. Sam Allardyce ( Everton, November 2017)
Is spending the best part of £50m on Cenk Tosun and Theo Walcott in 2018 'smart'? No, of course not, but he did at least avoid relegating a team which should have been nowhere near the bottom three.
41. Claude Puel (Southampton, June 2016)
Made it to a cup final and maybe should have won it. Also at the helm for 'Southampton in Europa (Redux)' and we'll let you decide if that belongs in the plus or minus column
40. Marco Silva (Watford, May 2017)
Really rather good until he got his head turned. After that, not so much.
39. Marco Silva (Everton, May 2018)
Might not have been worth all the drama to land him in the first place. A bit curious about whether he'd have turned it around with more time, but the signs (Silva at Watford, Silva at Hull in April and May 2017) suggest no.
38. Jose Mourinho ( Tottenham, November 2019)
That 6-1 was great, but when you hire a manager known for being a winner you need a bit more than that. No, he wouldn't have won that Carabao Cup final, before you ask.
37.Tony Pulis (West Brom, January 2015)
Tony Pulis took charge of 121 West Brom games. Seems high. Did at least achieve the pure distillation of his management style when Salomon Rondon scored a hat-trick of headers.
36. Tim Sherwood (Aston Villa, February 2015)
He took Aston Villa - *that* Aston Villa squad - to a cup final. He also did this.
35. Tim Sherwood (Tottenham, December 2013)
Would we have had Harry Kane without Tim Sherwood giving him a chance? Probably, yeah, given how good he is. Kane, not Sherwood.
34. Alan Pardew ( Crystal Palace, January 2015)
Gains points for the FA Cup final dance, but also loses points for the very same dance. This might seem counter-intuitive, but please remember this is a very long list and we've clearly bitten off more than we can chew.
33. Manuel Pellegrini ( West Ham, May 2018)
Responsible for bringing Roberto to the Premier League, and the world needs laughter. Also helped West Ham recognise that no, Declan Rice was not a better centre-back than he was a midfielder.
32. Craig Shakespeare ( Leicester, February 2017)
Craig Shakespeare has won a Champions League knockout game as a manager but was also sacked after leading a Leicester team with Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez to six points from their first eight league games the next season. He's also called Craig Shakespeare, which might be the most incongruous first name/surname combo in Premier League history.
31. Quique Sanchez Flores (Watford, June 2015)
The first spell, not the second one. Obviously.
30. Javi Gracia (Watford, January 2018)
Took Watford to a cup final. What happened when they got there? That's not important.
29. Darren Moore (West Brom, April 2018)
As good as predecessor Pardew was bad. A strong case for claiming this rookie would have kept Albion afloat had he come in earlier.
28. Ralph Hasenhuttl (Southampton, December 2018)
Losing 9-0 once is unlucky. Doing it twice is careless, but possibly not as careless as losing at home to Frank Lampard's Everton. And yet Hasenhuttl was very good at times, and, well, look at what happened to Southampton after he left.
27. Mark Hughes (Stoke, May 2013)
Sure, it ended pretty horribly, but Mark Hughes took Stoke to three successive top half finishes. They haven't even done that in the Championship in the last five years.
26. Patrick Vieira (Crystal Palace, July 2021)
Palace were a lot of fun under Vieira until they weren't. Even shut out Manchester City twice in a season, and pretty much no one manages that.
25. Unai Emery ( Arsenal, May 2018)
There was a Europa League final. That's good. There was some turgid football and a club record move for a guy who would have been worth it if you got bonus points for skill moves or free-kicks, to the point that you wonder whether he thought you do actually get that in the Premier League.
24. Frank Lampard (Chelsea, July 2019)
Lampard being unable to sign players has become one of those things you have to mention every time you say his name. You know, like Adrien Rabiot spending time in Manchester City's academy or Reims being fined whenever Will Still managed a game.
He did well in that first season, which is easy to overlook, but having Jorginho as your top scorer with seven - as was the case in 2020-21 - is frankly criminal. No pun intended.
23. Ronald Koeman (Everton, June 2016)
Koeman's time at Everton is basically what would have happened if West Ham sacked David Moyes midway through this season. Good, then very bad, and no time to pivot to 'less bad' before the team got rid.
22. Sam Allardyce (Crystal Palace, December 2016)
Part of the Allardyce-as-firefighter oeuvre. Beat Klopp's Liverpool at Anfield, which no one else did for ages afterwards, but also somehow found his team 4-0 down at half time at home to Moyes' Sunderland.
Big Sam left Selhurst Park with "no ambition to take another job" in football. He is now in his third managerial role in the six years since.
21. Tony Pulis (Crystal Palace, November 2013)
The basic argument around the 2013-14 season is that Liverpool threw away the title with their performance against Pulis' Crystal Palace. The more sophisticated one argues they did so against Jose Mourinho's Chelsea, but in fact both are close but wrong.
In fact, it was the performance against Pulis' Palace which saw Mourinho's Chelsea throw it away. The Blues were top of the league at the end of March when they visited a Palace team with 19 goals from 30 games. The Eagles won that, then the next four, and stayed up with just 33 goals scored. Then Pulis ruined it all with his acrimonious exit.
20. Rafa Benitez (Newcastle, March 2016)
Was he really that much better at Newcastle than Steve Bruce? Yes, yes he was.
19. Roberto Martinez (Everton, June 2013)
Martinez took Everton to 72 points in his first season. Seventy-two! That's way more than even the best Moyes season.
Yes, things got very bad after that, but Everton have proved that things can always - always - get worse.
18. Louis van Gaal (Man Utd, July 2014)
A real test of the theory that asks whether manager need to be good if they're fun. The results remain inconclusive.
The press conferences! The 'dive' on the touchline! The Angel Di Maria scoop against Leicester! The Marcus Rashford debut! The decision to trust in youth even when the young players were Not Good! Losing 4-0 to MK Dons, somehow!
One day, Louis van Gaal will return to England for a retrospective on his storied career. He'll head down to the coast and stare out into the sea. A bottle will wash up on shore. He'll walk slowly over to it and peer inside. In perfectly preserved handwriting, undamaged by the salty water, it will read 'Mata (Powell 69)'.
17. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer (Man Utd, December 2018)
Right, so that last season was unspeakably bad. Bringing Cristiano Ronaldo back to Old Trafford was, clearly, not the masterstroke some envisioned. Losing 4-1 to Claudio Ranieri's Watford was simply really, really difficult to do.
He also reached the Europa League final, though, and produced that miracle win at PSG. He also signed Bruno Fernandes. Yes, and Dan James, but let's not dwell on that.
16. Brendan Rodgers (Leicester, February 2019)
Another which should be judged more reasonably with the benefit of time. The wheels came off, but only after two seasons in which the Foxes were one game away from a top four finish.
It will be curious to see what happens in Rodgers' next job. Will he excel for two seasons and then start to flounder? Will he find a way to buck the trend? Or will his club decide to listen to advances after those two years of success rather than falling into the familiar trap?
15. Antonio Conte (Tottenham, November 2021)
Look at Spurs now. Look at Spurs before Conte arrived. Look at what happened in between.
Was it fun? Almost never, and certainly not for some of the players. Was there growth? Not in any tangible sense. They finished above Arsenal, though, and isn't that the real quiz? No, not really.
14. Maurizio Sarri (Chelsea, July 2018)
A European trophy isn't to be sniffed at. The same applies to a third place finish in a season where Sarri appeared to be a dead man walking for at least half of it.
Did it help that Chelsea's rivals all floundered as the Blues clinched third with one win from their last five? Sure. Did it help that a favourable draw and the dying embers of Eden Hazard's elite career got them over the line in the Europa League. Again, yes.
If nothing else, putting Sarri so high on this list gives you an idea of how hard managerial appointments can be to get right.
13. Sam Allardyce (Sunderland, October 2015)
Yes, it's that Sunderland Vortex again, but Allardyce got out at the right time. Not only did he rescue a side which he took over after eight winless games to start the season, but he did so at the expense of Newcastle.
12. Roy Hodgson (Crystal Palace, September 2017)
Crystal Palace had no points when Hodgson arrived. None. Zero. Nada. We can't stress that enough. He also gave us one of the finest football beefs, and with it one of English football's unimprovable quotes.
"If you’re asking me whether Harry the Hornet, who I presume is the mascot, should dive in that way, I think it’s disgraceful because that’s not what football matches are about," Hodgson said in 2018.
Read that again. "Who I presume is the mascot". You don't want to rule out the lad in a massive furry hornet costume actually being a deep-lying midfielder, it would be extremely embarrassing if you made the wrong assumption there.
11. Graham Potter ( Brighton, May 2019)
Wonder what happened to that guy.
10. Carlo Ancelotti (Everton, December 2019)
Everton got a manager who no club in their position should have had a hope of landing, and created some wonderful memories before losing him to a club with whom he won the Champions League. A prime example of why you should never hope for good things.
9. Slaven Bilic (West Ham, June 2015)
With three games of the 2015-16 season remaining, West Ham had their fate in their own hands. Beat Swansea, Man Utd and Stoke, and Champions League football would be theirs.
This being West Ham, they obviously beat Man Utd and lost the other two. Not only did Bilic deliver European qualification, but he showed he understood the Hammers' particular brand of glorious but chaotic failure.
Bilic also set up a West Ham defence containing a World Cup winner and a European Championships victor. Unfortunately for the fans, those players were Alvaro Arbeloa and Jose Fonte, asked to play in a high like which left Angelo Ogbonna in the rare position of being 'the nippy one'.
8. Jose Mourinho (Man Utd, May 2016)
Winning trophies is good, it turns out. Mourinho did it twice, but then he stopped being able to do it.
Man Utd were somehow in better and also worse shape after he moved on, and some of his signings were extremely Mourinho (not a compliment). By the end, though, no one really seemed to be having fun.
7. Ronald Koeman (Southampton, June 2014)
Remember what we said about Rodgers earlier. Two years followed by a poaching and a rebuild. This was what it looked like.
The 8-0 was great. The rise of Sadio Mane was better. Graziano Pelle's haircut was unimprovable.
6. Manuel Pellegrini (Man City, June 2013)
Sure, he won the league, but it felt a bit accidental. Certainly no one seemed overly happy about any of it.
We do have fond memories of the 2016 FA Cup game against Chelsea where the Chilean opted to play the kids against Chelsea - reigning Premier League champions Chelsea - and unsurprisingly got handed a 5-1 loss.
He was also called a "f***ing old c***" by Alan Pardew, a man only eight years his junior. That's like Steve Cooper saying the same to Sean Dyche, which... actually, you know what, we're a bit curious about how that would play out.
5. Jose Mourinho (Chelsea, June 2013)
On one hand, it's impressive that Mourinho was able to win the league with a squad as bad as the one which he had fighting relegation in 2015-16. On the other hand, it's impressive that he took a title-winning team and left them just outside the bottom three.
It's all about perspective, isn't it. Like the perspective of thinking what a title defence really needed was Papy Djilobodji, Michael Hector and Kenedy.
4. Thomas Tuchel (Chelsea, January 2021)
Just pips Mourinho by virtue of having won the Champions League. Also figured out early enough that he benefits from being a hat guy, something which other balding managers can end up resisting for far too long.
Also, if we're being brutally honest, he probably did enough to warrant more in Europe last season as well and just got unlucky to find his team up against an inspired Real Madrid. It looks at this stage like he was sacked too early, but that's like saying you shouldn't have bought that Caesar salad just because a fly happened to land on it as you took your first bite.
3. Antonio Conte (Chelsea, July 2016)
Decades into the future, scientists will conduct studies into how Chelsea won the Premier League with a three-at-the-back set-up which used Victor Moses and Marcos Alonso. Results will be inconclusive, but they'll say 'probably something to do with this Kante fella'.
2.Claudio Ranieri (Leicester, July 2015)
Decades into the future, scientists will conduct studies into how Leicester won the Premier League with Wes Morgan and Robert Huth at centre-back. Results will be inconclusive, but they'll say 'probably something to do with this Kante fella, with all due respect, why did they start the season with Andy King playing ahead of him?'.
1. Mauricio Pochettino (Tottenham, May 2014)
Before Mauricio Pochettino took over at Spurs, they had finished in the top four twice in Premier League history. Under the Argentine, they did it four times in a row.
Sure, there was no trophy to go along with it, but 86 points has been enough for the title plenty of times. A Champions League final, meanwhile, wasn't within the fans' wildest dreams when he took charge.
Above all that, Pochettino looked like he gave really good hugs to all his players, so much so that you wondered whether some of those new contracts were signed just so they could have his arm round them in the announcement photos.
Isn't that what football's all about? No, okay, it's also trophies, but this is our list and we'll do what we want.
