The 2023-24 Premier League season has come and gone, and I have mixed feelings about it. It was certainly one of the absolute maddest and best seasons from an entertainment point of view, with points deductions, goals scored and goals conceded galore. Indeed, this season featured the most goals in Premier League history, even considering that teams played 42 games rather than 38 between 1992-95. And for the 2nd season in a row, a different top 6 than usual.
On the other hand, compared to recent years I’m left with the feeling that the quality of the league as a whole has rapidly gone downhill. For the 2nd straight season, the entire bottom half of the league table was truly pathetic. But this season I’d argue the entire table from 6th downwards was abysmal. At least last season the top 10 were all very strong, with even Spurs in the top 4 race all season before a collapse saw them drop to 8th, and all 3 promoted had talent in spades and managed to stay up, the first time all 3 have survived since 2017-18.
This season, we saw all 3 promoted teams go down (all in very limp fashion) for only the 2nd time in the Premier League era. 2 of them showed no ambition beyond taking the Prem money, while 1 crashed and burned by spending their money all wrong and persisting with naive tactics. The likes of Nottingham Forest and Brentford were very lucky the bottom 3 were so crap. Palace only got going in March. Newcastle, Bournemouth, Fulham, Everton and Wolves were all extremely streaky. Brighton and West Ham both had great starts but spent 2024 in relegation form. Manchester United were truly rancid all season despite a surprise FA Cup win. Chelsea somehow managed to snatch 6th despite being terrible and a total mess beyond belief for 3/4’s of the season. Hell, even Villa and Spurs were pretty weak top 4 contenders when judged purely by points totals, even though both certainly performed above expectations.
One oddity about this season (especially compared to the last 2) is that there were very few managerial sackings this season. Whether it’s due to clubs that have been reckless in the market fearing the effects of FFP, or just the lack of quality candidates available, or just simply more clubs now buying in to the idea of long-term projects (fools, not every manager is an Arteta who’ll end up being success if “backed”) it’s been curious watching managers who’d certainly lose their jobs in any other season just limp on right up until matchday 38 against all odds. Some proved their doubters wrong, some did not. Today I’ll be analysing the performances of every single manager in the Premier League 2023-24 season, including the ones who were sacked, partially judged under the circumstances they did their job under and how much their work represented either progress from the season prior or maintaining their prior standard. Let’s get right into it…
23. VINCENT KOMPANY (BURNLEY)
Oh no, not Bayern Munich’s esteemed new gaffer at the bottom?! Well, yes. I’m as perplexed as most football fans at Bayern taking such a big risk, more so perplexed that he’s escaped a lot of (in my opinion) strongly deserved criticism for spending the most money by far out of any of the promoted sides yet hilariously finishing below Luton Town who had to renovate their own ground to be up to Prem standard and barely spent a penny on wages.
The naive recruitment of young players who also happened to be inexperienced in English football as well and persisting with the naive stubborn tactics despite a defence made out of paper were bad enough. But benching a goalkeeper in Muric who was both quality and suited his system perfectly in the Championship for the hapless new big name recruit James Trafford until MARCH is what really seals his place here more than anything else. Kompany may have an easier ride at Bayern with better players to play his system (much like in the Championship, where he did admittedly do an impressive job) but that doesn’t make his job this season any less wretched in every area.
22. ROY HODGSON (CRYSTAL PALACE, AUGUST-FEBRUARY)
Poor old Roy. I have great respect for the man for all his great work throughout his lengthy career, and even for having the balls to keep on managing in his late 70’s. He even did a great job initially last season in his return to Crystal Palace, totally saving their season and reviving a dressing room that had been lost by Patrick Viera.
But staying on a permanent basis for this season for the sake of “stability” was a mistake. A squad that wasn’t improved upon much from last season seemingly felt they had little to play for with a manager that was openly only staying for a year, and his tactics are now more than a little bit old hat in today’s Premier League. As was highlighted by Oliver Glasner completely turning their fortunes around in only 2 months when Roy had them in a relegation scrap.
21. STEVE COOPER (NOTTINGHAM FOREST, AUGUST-DECEMBER)
I couldn’t believe it when people accused Nottingham Forest of being harsh when they sacked Steve Cooper in December. I like Cooper, and he did a remarkable job at getting Forest to the Premier League to start with (and to be honest keeping them up as well last year despite a massive turnover in personell and injuries) but whatever you think of Forest’s scattergun and reckless approach to recruitment that has no doubt made it difficult for him, he persisted with quite frankly boring and overly negative football that did not get the best out of the attacking talent at his disposal. And he had 0 plan B without Awoniyi. As soon as he got injured, Forest went into freefall. I see little argument that his sacking wasn’t deserved, as sad as it was.
20. PAUL HECKINGBOTTOM (SHEFFIELD UNITED, AUGUST-DECEMBER)
It would be easy to just ignore all context, look at Heckingbottom having one of the worst records of any Premier League manager ever in terms of results and just label him the worst. But on the flipside, he led Sheffield United back to the Premier League in the first place, managing to maintain squad unity and stability despite little opportunity for big recruitment and a backdrop of growing financial problems. Added to that, he lost by far his 2 best players in a pitiful summer window that left Sheffield United basically destined for the drop before a ball had been kicked, particularly as this was basically the same team that finished rock bottom 3 seasons ago, but older and arguably even worse in quality. Sure, he departed in December having lost 11 out of 14 games, most of them in humiliating fashion (including an 8-0 loss to Newcastle and, worse, a 5-0 humbling by relegation rivals Burnley) but his successor hardly did any better with this miserable squad, and to be honest neither would a lot of managers in his position.
19. CHRIS WILDER (SHEFFIELD UNITED, DECEMBER-)
Given that both presided over one of the worst seasons in the history of top flight English football, it’s difficult to seperate Wilder and Heckingbottom. Both showed very little imagination and very little signs of getting this awful team out of the pits, but at the same time it’s difficult to blame either too much, such was the team’s poor quality. Wilder initially helped lift the mood around the place at least as a United legend who only recently them from League One to 9th place in the Premier League, but he was always quite a poor and desperate PR appointment from an ownership trying to deflect from their lack of care for the club, rather than a smart one. Recent poor stints in the Championship with Middlesbrough and Watford had shown him up as quite a bit tactically stubborn and past his sell by date, his recruitment in January (Mason Holgate, anyone?) was terrible, and ultimately despite inspiring a slight improvement in fight and results early on, he showed little else the longer the season went on, and failed to stop his beloved Blades acheiving the deeply unwanted stat of being the first team in the entire history of England’s top flight to concede 104 goals. Ouch…
Hey, at least we got his legendary sandwich rant!
18. NUNO ESPRITO SANTO (NOTTINGHAM FOREST, DECEMBER-)
I thought Nuno was a smart appointment by Forest to replace Cooper. Maybe not good enough to acheive the chairman’s quite insane and overly optimistic ambitions for the club right now, but certainly a more Premier League proven manager who could ensure survival this season at least. But it’s been far less comfortable than I expected. I think Nuno has been an improvement on Cooper, as he has at least gotten the best out Forest’s attacking players (noticeably Chris Wood, who has had quite a spectacular revival under his management) but Forest’s results overall didn’t improve much under him. Partially to be fair down to injuries and some insane officiating decisions, but also occasionally because of poor tactical choices at times and a leaky defence. Even without the 4 point deduction due to their financial breaches, Forest would have finished the season rather comfortably in 17th with only 36 points, and would still have been extremely lucky that the bottom 3 were as bad as they were. Regardless, he certainly did do his job at keeping Forest up, but more has to be expected for next season.
17. ERIK TEN HAG (MANCHESTER UNITED)
I have to admit, before his very surprising FA Cup Final win last week, where he astonishingly managed to get his tactics spot on against one of world football’s best super teams, and ensures he’s objectively Manchester United’s most successful post-Fergie manager next to Jose Mourinho, I had Erik Ten Hag much further down the list. Next to bottom even.
It’s fair to say it’s been an absolute horror show of a season for Manchester United from top to bottom, and if they’d failed to win the FA Cup it would have been their worst season overall since the late 1980’s. And I have to say, a lot of that rests on the shoulders of Ten Hag, rather than the Glazers this time.
While Ten Hag’s first season at United was undeniably a success considering what he inherited, a 3rd place finish and a first trophy win in 6 years masked what were still a lot of underlying problems, with numerous heavy defeats against the other top sides (including a 7-0 pasting by old enemies Liverpool) and relying far too heavily on Marcus Rashford being in insane form for a brief period. United as a team scored only 58 league goals last season, a remarkably low tally for a side finishing in the top 4.
It also masked some pretty big mistakes in the transfer market which have brutally come to the forefront this season. Casemiro on a free initially looked like a bargain for United, the passionate Champions League winning veteran still looking lively last season and finally bringing some stability to United’s typically barren midfield, but this season he’s had a tough time with injuries and is really showing his age at points as a result. Christian Eriksen also initially seemed a bright spark, but has also turned out to be a short termist and ageing mistake in the same vein. And the less said about the £86 million slow motion all timer flop Antony (who was very much a Ten Hag target unlike the other 2) the better. Out of this season’s signings, Mason Mount has been a disaster from the off, a confusing signing that made no sense trying to shoehorn next to Bruno Fernandes and resulting in him reguarly being left out of the team even when not injured, while Goalkeeper Andre Onana and Striker Ramus Hoijlund have been….let’s be fair and call them works in progress.
While admittedly suffering from a lot of defensive injuries throughout the campaign which he’s repeatedly (and arrogantly) used as an excuse for all his issues, it doesn’t explain United’s total utter lack of footballing identity or noticeable progress on the pitch. With Rashford completely and utterly falling off in form (yet again) there has been no other plan to score goals, with United being one of the lowest scoring teams in the league for most of the season, and even while having a capable and fit defence, they’ve conceded 20 shots a game (relegation level numbers) thanks to Ten Hag persisting with his suicidal midfield set up and utterly negative play. Their Champions League campaign (in an easy group no less) was an unmitigated disaster, and even their FA Cup path was plagued with unconvincing scrape throughs against lower league sides Wigan, Newport and Coventry.
But…despite all of that the FA Cup win (without doubt a tactical masterclass against a frozen and rigid Manchester City) means that should he be dismissed by United’s incoming new ownership group who have been actively pursuing a fresh approach in all areas, he will leave with his head held high, his first season being a very good one topped off by a League Cup win and his otherwise disastrous second being topped off by United’s first FA Cup since 2016. This coming after United had before him gone 6 years without a trophy can only be seen as a positive, and regardless of his numerous failings this season he’ll still leave the club with his stock still high given the club’s numerous fundamental and behind the scenes issues.
16. DAVID MOYES (WEST HAM UNITED)
The fierce debates around David Moyes’ position at West Ham are quite a bit similar to the debates around Southgate’s position at England, or going further back the debates around Wenger towards the end of his 20 years at Arsenal. Moyes took over the West Ham job when they were at a low point, and not only provided stability but went above and beyond in taking them to greater heights than they’ve known in decades, taking them from numerous relegation scraps to 6th and 7th place finishes respectively, and despite a rough 3rd season made up for it by winning them their first trophy in over 40 years, the Europa Conference League, thus ensuring 3 consecutive years of European football. And this season (on paper) saw improvement again to 9th. Thus you can certainly forgive people on the outside for being baffled about many Hammers fans wanting Moyes out. That is until you actually look at West Ham’s results and performances this season and it makes a bit more sense.
Despite the historic achievement of the Conference League win, last season was a pretty awful one for West Ham and indeed for Moyes in the league, with a lot of money being spent to improve the squad and push on further following terrific back-to-back European finishes. But with some of the players being brought in seemingly not being suited to Moyes’ tactics, and him largely stubbornly persisting with many stale players who’d served him faithfully before, West Ham endured a torrid campaign that nearly resulted in relegation. Only in Europe did his tactics still have the benefit of surprise.
This season, West Ham certainly bounced back from last year’s relegation battle, thanks partially to the impressive signings of James Ward-Prowse and Mohammed Kudus, and Jared Bowen being back on form. But that was only in the first half of the season, with largely unsustainable football. West Ham certainly won a lot of games and were in a European race in the first half of the season, but that was largely due to clinical finishing from their strikers, mistakes from the opposition and Alphonse Areola consistently performing wonders in goal. Whether they won or lost (and when they did lose it tended to be embarassing, getting smacked 4-1 by Aston Villa, 5-0 by Fulham and 5-1 by Liverpool in the EFL Cup) it was always with a very small amount of possession and playing very ugly, overtly defensive football that had clearly gone not just stale but far backwards since Moyes’ first 2 seasons at the club.
And as many onlookers predicted, that luck was soon to run out. West Ham’s 2024 has so far been pretty terrible, with only 5 wins in all competitions, exiting the FA Cup to Championship Bristol City, losing 6-0 to Arsenal, 5-0 to Chelsea and 5-2 to Crystal Palace and ending the season conceding an absolutely mammoth 74 league goals despite finishing 9th. For context, that’s only 3 less than the Watford side that finished the 2021-22 season on 23 points and relegated in 19th. Particularly for a side that played such aggressively negative football all season, that’s just unacceptable, and it’s perfectly understandable why West Ham’s board have now felt the need to go in a different direction, especially with their new director of football reportedly not seeing eye to eye with Moyes on transfers.
It’s nice that Moyes at least got to end his overall excellent time as manager of West Ham on a somewhat stable note, with the season overall certainly being an improvement on the last, but quite frankly with the amount of money that has been spent since last getting 7th 2 years ago Hammers fans feel they should now be getting better than the negative dross they’ve been watching since. It’ll be interesting to see if Julen Lopetegui will be the man to take them to the next level, but regardless it’ll always be David Moyes who got them to these heights to start with, and despite his low ranking for this final season he deserves immense credit for the job he did.
15. ROBERTO DE ZERBI (BRIGHTON & HOVE ALBION)
Despite the low rating here, I still definitely think Roberto De Zerbi is an immensely talented manager who has great potential at a top club. But this season has shown his drawbacks for sure.
Last season, admittedly off the back of years of smart squad building and data/youth driven development from Brighton’s incredible ownership and the coaching and consistent progress under Graham Potter, De Zerbi won deserved plaudits not only for completing Brighton’s journey to Europe after Potter’s early-season departure for a doomed stint at Chelsea, but also introducing a remarkably entertaining style of football that made Potter-ball look boring.
This season has been a bit of a different story. Much like West Ham, Brighton started this season great, seeming to as usual shrug off the departures of star players (like Alexis MacAllister and Moises Caicedo) while integrating promising young players, and looked to be in another race for Europe in the early months of the season, as well as also managing another huge acheivement in their history in getting through to the knockout stages in their first ever European campaign. Results dipped a bit in the league compared to last season, but that was quite natural with the losses in personell and competing in two fronts in the league and Europe.
But much like West Ham, Brighton’s second half of the season was a disaster as they dropped like a stone defensively, and with injuries to certain key players such as Mitoma also robbing them of the ability to score enough goals it exposed their defensive issues more and more that have quite honestly been building up since even the end of last season. It became clear that Brighton have been seriously missing MacAllister and Caicedo, contrary to the prior assumption, which left their defense more and more exposed as the season went on.
De Zerbi certainly can’t be blamed for the injuries or quite a poor transfer window by Brighton’s standards, but I do think he can be blamed for refusing to ever adapt his style of play when faced with these defensive problems and the injuries themselves, and letting Brighton drop off bad enough to end up miraculously dropping below their rivals Crystal Palace by the end of the campaign, having thrashed a relegation threatened Palace 4-1 only months prior. He also spent an incessant amount of time moaning about Brighton’s transfer strategy and refusing to spend big, which made him seem quite unprofessional and stubborn. The announcement of his decision to leave has come as no surprise.
14. MAURICIO POCHETTINO (CHELSEA)
It feels like a very long time ago now since Poch was regarded as one of the best managers in world football, having overperformed with Espanyol and Southampton and then made Spurs a consistent top 4 Premier League team for the first time, and playing exciting football with all three clubs, with an additional emphasis on promoting youth. While he never won anything at Spurs despite having a fantastic team, which gained him some criticism, it’s fair to say that at Tottenham gaining Champions League football is generally prioritised by the club over winning trophies, and he did get them to a Champions League final after all.
Since then, he’s been sacked by Spurs after both his squad and tactics went stale, underwhelmed massively at PSG (losing the league in his first half season, and limping over the line with a “superteam”) and now failed to light the world on fire at Chelsea, to put it mildly.
To start with the positives, Chelsea have certainly been an enjoyable team to watch under Pochettino this season, and even in spite of often underperforming their XG have scored an impressive 77 league goals. They reached the League Cup final and the FA Cup Semi-finals. And despite generally being in a rough league position for most of the season, they managed to eventually at least improve on their disastrous finish from last season with a 6th place finish thanks to a strong (ish) final stretch with just 1 defeat from their last 15 games. And this was under difficult circumstances at times with a young squad and a lot of injury issues.
I’m also not quite going to hold it against Poch too much that a finish of 6th is still embarassing for a club that’s just spent an absolutely obscene amount of money to the point where Man City and PSG have been made to look conservative. This is largely on the club’s ownership and there insane scheme to spend all of that money on every promising young player in the world on long contracts, seemingly on the long shot chance that they’ll all eventually develop into elite ballers. Despite the ludicrous amount of money spent, it’s still quite an underdeveloped squad in a lot of ways.
But on the negative side, I will contend that a better manager would still have gotten Chelsea into the top 4, especially when you consider that the race for top 4 and Europe in general was very weak this season, not having to contend with Europe and that their new star man Cole Palmer had one of the best seasons in recent memory for a Chelsea attacking player. Without Palmer, it’d be fair to say Chelsea would be a lot closer to the relegation zone than to Europe for most of the season, and relying so much on one individual is never good. His tactical decisions have also been strange at various parts during the campaign, the worst one being playing for penalties against a bunch of Liverpool academy players in Extra Time of the cup final. Chelsea’s defense has also been a shambles compared to how it was under Potter, with largely the same players AND the addition of Caicedo, which is again poor. They went from conceding just 47 goals last season to a whopping 63 this season, and suffered quite a few embarassing dropped points to poor sides, and hammerings away from home against top sides. In my opinion this mess of a club would be in a better position now if they’d just given Potter time rather than shifting gears to give the project to a new manager who was massively different from their original goal.
Ultimately Poch parted ways with Chelsea after the season was concluded owning to numerous disagreements with the board’s ludicrous strategy, but it’s arguable that he should have been pushed before he walked, and many months ago. He’ll certainly go down as one of…the Chelsea managers of all time.
13. ROB EDWARDS (LUTON TOWN)
Edwards is extremely tough to rate so I’ve ultimately decided on around the middle.
On the one hand, Luton, much like Burnley and Sheffield United, went down very comfortably by the end, only Nottingham Forest’s points deduction even seeing them be in with a chance on the final day.
On the other, Luton, a tiny and financially small club by today’s standards were massively punching above their weight even being in the Premier League to start with, with Edwards having completed a miracle rise started all the way back down in League 2 under Nathan Jones by bumping them up to the next level with his excellent and more progressive football. And ultimately, with the level of their recruitment (mostly top level Championship players) they were mostly there to make up the numbers and just take the Premier League money.
Yet in spite of that, Luton played some of the best football in the league and won many plaudits for always trying and being competetive throughout the season, certainly compared to Sheffield United and Burnley (the latter finishing below Luton being a real embarassment for them as the only promoted club to spend a significant amount of money). There was a point where Edwards was in Manager of the Season conversations as he still had Luton in a real fight by January. But from that point onwards Luton fell off badly and suffered mostly numerous pastings in the second half of the season after such a surprising and positive few months of fight. So he’s hard to really judge as a proper top flight manager as of this moment in time.
12. THOMAS FRANK (BRENTFORD)
Quite similar to Brighton, Brentford have been one of the most impressively run football clubs in recent memory, over acheiving massively on an incredibly low budget thanks to an excellent data driven system and consistent identity.
But it’s really the incredibly shrewd management of Thomas Frank, and his remarkable ability to develop fringe players and get the best out of them, that’s really taken Brentford to the next level. From being considered to be overacheiving in the Championship mid-table under Dean Smith, Brentford soon became two time promotion contenders under Frank, getting to the Premier League at the 2nd opportunity, remarkably surviving in their first season without hardly spending a penny and then improving further to a top half finish last season.
This season has certainly been Frank’s most difficult as Brentford manager, with star striker Ivan Toney missing for most of the season and goalkeeper David Raya departing for Arsenal, leaving him robbed of arguably his two most crucial players for his system. Yet he has still managed to keep them in the league, such is his talent as a manager. It’s been a grim season for Brentford, suffering an absolutely enormous amout of poor defeats bookended by a solid start and end to the campaign, but ultimately Frank has done his job.
11. MARCO SILVA (FULHAM)
Fulham appear to have gone under the radar quite a bit this season, compared to last season where the spotlight was on them more due to being a newly promoted side and acheiving their highest top flight finish since 2012. However, they really shouldn’t have.
Despite doing worse than they did last season and being riddled with inconsistent and streaky form, Marco Silva continues to quietly do a very solid job down in West London, easily the club’s best manager since Roy Hodgson. Having taken them straight from the Championship to a top 10 finish after their previous 2 Premier League campaigns had ended in comfortable relegation thanks to an effective and stylish brand of football and remarkable eye for recruitment, Silva has impressively managed to overcome the loss of star striker Alexander Mitrovic to still keep Fulham firing in a decent amount of goals, enough to ensure they had another rather comfortable (if less successful) season. And having taken them to the FA Cup Semi-Final last season, he took them to the League Cup Semis this season, in which they were unlucky not to progress further.
Silva continues to be one of the most underrated (if not quite top level) managers around.
10. EDDIE HOWE (NEWCASTLE UNITED)
I think this season has underscored just how much Eddie Howe has acheived with Newcastle in such a short amount of time. Newcastle may be the richest club in the world now, but this isn’t the era of Chelsea or even Manchester City when they had their two big money takeovers and could buy the Earth. Newcastle have had to be very very careful with their spending due to the risk of breaking FFP (albeit, still spending a lot mind you), and their progress into becoming a super club has naturally not been super quick due to the rotten state of the club when they took over compared to Chelsea and Manchester City at the time of theirs. While Chelsea were already a Champions League Club and Man City a mid table side, Newcastle were destined for relegation with an outdated management style and rotting training grounds.
It’s ridiculously impressive then that with only a few new additions to what was Steve Bruce’s squad battling relegation, Howe first took them from being bottom at Christmas to 11th by the end of his first half-season in charge, then with just a few more additions while still consistently improving Bruce-era flops like Joelinton, Miguel Almiron and Fabian Schar, took them to a shock finish in the top 4 and a return to Champions League football well ahead of schedule.
Perhaps this has raised people’s expectations of Newcastle a bit too high as to be quite honest I’m not remotely surprised by their drop off this season. They’re still unable to dramatically boost their squad depth (regardless of where they spend their money) and a combination of an absolutely enormous amount of defensive injuries (most damagingly of all their world class shot stopper Nick Pope) and burnout among what is still a small squad due to them now having to compete in Europe (which was also an outrageously difficult group) caused them to concede an absolute shed load of chances and goals this season.
But while Howe has looked lost of ideas at how to keep his team defensively compact with all those problems, he’s managed to actually improve Newcastle’s attack, with Newcastle extraordinarily scoring almost 20 more goals than they did last season (with Anthony Gordon another unlikely player that Howe has improved hugely) and it helped them managed to crawl into a top 7 spot. Sadly for them, they were denied a 2nd consecutive season in Europe by 8th place Man United winning the FA Cup.
09. ANGE POSTECOGLU (TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR)
A late season slump is making people forget, I think, that there were very low expectations for Tottenham going into this season. Last season, Tottenham reached their lowest point in over a decade, collapsing to an 8th place finish after Antonio Conte got himself fired, and even up to that point were only in a top 4 race thanks to Harry Kane having the carry job season of his life.
With Kane gone only a few weeks before the start of the season, and an unproven manager at the top level coming in to try and implement his style of play, most people quite understandably thought it would be a tough transitional season for Tottenham.
Instead, Big Ange has made his mark quite early, winning over the Tottenham fans with commendably exciting front foot football (so refreshing after the dour negativity of Jose Mourinho, Nuno and Conte in succession) and (partly thanks to some strong recruitment in the right areas, particularly Vicario in goal and Van de Ven at CB) saw Spurs get back into a top 4 race, which early on even looked like a title race.
That was before injuries started to pile up to numerous key players, and it meant they were a lot more streaky and prone to defensive collapses on occasion. They ultimately bottled top 4, but there’s definitely been promising signs so far under Ange’s management and 5th is certainly a good finish under the circumstances.
08. OLIVER GLASNER (CRYSTAL PALACE, FEBRUARY-)
Glasner being as high as 8th on this ranking despite only coming in 3 months ago should say all it needs to say.
Now without a doubt most people already saw it as a coup when Palace appointed Glasner, renowned for leading Eintracht Frankfurt to the Europa League very recently while enforcing an outrageously entertaining brand of football. But the mark he’s made on Palace in such a short amount of time with no pre-season is remarkable.
When he took over in February, Palace no doubt had a talented squad but one without much depth or balance in certain areas and one whose attacking potential and confidence had faded the longer the dated Roy Hodgson’s 2nd tenure wore on, and they had sank into a relegation battle, things becoming increasingly toxic towards notoriously dithering owner Steve Parish after a pathetic 4-1 pasting by rivals Brighton.
By the end of the season, Glasner had improved Palace so much that they ended up not only finishing *above* Brighton, which seemed impossible at the time, but acheiving their highest finish since the 2014-15 season in 10th. It’s not just the results that have been better too, but the style of play has been possibly the best we’ve seen from Palace in their entire 12 years in the top flight, and he’s massively improved the performances of Jean-Phillipe Mateta, who has amazingly become a goal scoring machine under Glasner, enough to win Palace’s Player of the Season award. As long as he is properly backed, Palace fans should be very optimistic for his first full season in charge.
07. GARY O’NEIL (WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS)
Again, O’Neil drops a few places in the ranking from where he was before as Wolves had a fairly dreadful end to the season, with just 1 win and only 5 points total from their last 10 games. Considering this also happened with Bournemouth last season, and maybe partly contributed to him being sacked by them, it is maybe fair to question whether or not the young and passionate coach is capable of building any sort of real tactical identity over a long period, which evidently is what Bournemouth fans thought when he was pushed out for Iraola despite keeping them up.
Regardless, O’Neil has had an impressive start to his managerial career doing 2 very tough jobs in a row, both under difficult circumstances. Despite being sacked by Bournemouth and undoubtedly seeing some quite streaky runs and some tactical disasterclasses at times that season, keeping Bournemouth in the Premier League was without doubt an impressive acheivement with the squad at his disposal, and especially with their confidence smashed after a 9-0 defeat to Liverpool early on which saw Scott Parker sacked following a dispute with the previous owners after the game.
His acheivement with Wolves this season though has been actually more impressive, for various reasons. For a start, he took over only 1 week before the season actually started after Julen Lopetegui walked out, and was faced with a mass exodus of a lot of the club’s top earners in order to avoid FFP violations. Somehow, from that, O’Neil managed to take what had been left behind and built a winning, battling culture that saw Wolves not only nowhere near the relegation zone at any point after August, but even in a position to push for Europe at one point before things badly dropped off in the 2nd half of the season. Meanwhile he’s worked very hard to build a real rapport with the fanbase.
What also impresses me is that again despite the loss of so many key players, he’s actually managed to improve Wolves’ attack, which has been their main weakness by far in recent seasons, to put it mildly. Here’s a tally of Wolves’ League Goals Scored in their time in the Premier League in recent years for comparison:
- 2018-19: 47
- 2019-20: 51
- 2020-21: 36
- 2021-22: 38
- 2022-23: 31
- 2023-24: 50
That’s quite incredible especially when you consider how utterly dismal and hopeless their attack was only a year ago, and how they’ve only scored this amount of goals once in their current stint in the PL. O’Neil may not be the world’s greatest manager, but he does deserve respect for what he’s done so far.
06. SEAN DYCHE (EVERTON)
You could argue Dyche should be even higher given what he’s managed to acheive under constraints many other managers would have crumbled under, but I am afraid I can’t ignore that Everton had a very very poor and loooong winless run that lasted all the way from December through to April. Part of that was due to Everton’s forward line being about as useful in front of goal as a dildo in a nunnery, but a big part of it as well was Dyche’s absolutely insane tactical stubborness and favouritism when it came to team selections and substitutions. How 38 year old Ashley Young repeatedly stayed on the pitch despite endlessly costing his team goals, penalty kicks and chances the longer he was on is mind boggling for example.
But regardless of Dyche’s well documented weaknesses, he’s also a manager who can motivate even the worst footballers to show the absolute maximum passion and character. In charge of practically the same squad that last season was sinking to an almost certain relegation with Frank Lampard in charge, and that Dyche himself just barely kept up by the skin of their teeth, with the only impressive addition this year being the emergence of terrific youngster Jarred Branthwaite in defence, the effect Dyche has had on Everton after his first pre-season has been very impressive.
Not only have they been more defensively strong, as expected under Dyche, conceding only 51 league goals, which was the 4th best defensive record in the league this season after the top 3, Dyche has also had his side fighting for every ball and creating a boat load of chances. Now it has to be emphasised again just how useless Everton’s attackers have been this season, as despite them creating so many chances they only managed to score 40 goals all season, less than every other team in the league besides Sheffield United, which is truly awful, but not something that Dyche can be blamed for.
And his big improvement in terms of motivation and strategy on the pitch compared to their often pathetic and clueless performances under Lampard and Rafa Benitez has resulted in them somehow managing to rise above a total deduction of 8 points (due to their outgoing owners numerous past financial breahces) to still manage to end up nowhere near the drop, thanks to a very strong first half of the season and a just as terrific end to the season in April-May, which included them memorably denying their arch-rivals Liverpool the title with a perfectly masterminded 2-0 win. Remarkably, Everton would have finished this season in 12th if it wasn’t for the 8 points they lost, which (while not perfect at times) represents a big improvement over their utterly miserable last 2 seasons of near-relegation.
Should Everton get new sensible ownership and he is backed further, I can definitely see Dyche being Everton’s best manager since David Moyes. In fact, he arguably already is!
05. ANDONI IRAOLA (AFC BOURNEMOUTH)
I can’t say I was a fan of the way Bournemouth treated Gary O’Neil after he’d worked so hard to keep them in the division against expectations (in his first season of his managerial career no less) but my tune did change somewhat when they immediately announced Andoni Iraola as their new manager.
This wasn’t from the outset the same situation as Birmingham City’s disastrous decision to sack their popular manager John Eustace for Wayne Rooney during the season and for a style of football their players couldn’t do. While I still disagree with what they did to O’Neil on principle, it was ultimately made because Bournemouth’s new owners wanted to go in a different direction, and they chose the right time to do it, doing it long before the start of the new season (having already identified their target) and making sure their recruitment matched what the new manager wanted to do. While ruthless and harsh, it was also smart on their owner’s behalf, especially given the calbire of manager they actually appointed. And as seen from O’Neil’s ranking, the move really worked out for both Bournemouth and Wolves.
Iraola has been a coach with a fast rising reputation recently over in his home country, having performed miracles and giant killings in the Spanish Cup with 2nd Division Mirandes and then also overseeing both promotion and unlikely stability in the middle of La Liga with Rayo Vallecano. And at Bournemouth he’s continued to enhance his reputation.
He got off to an undeniably tough start, with a few of his new signings injured while also trying to implement a new style of play under those circumstances resulting in 0 wins from his first 9 games in charge. But again, Bournemouth’s owners backed their man here, recognising the injuries and also noticing that the performances were better than the results.
And once everything fell into place, Iraola’s side took off with numerous impressive results and great runs for the remainder of the season. A ridiculous unbeaten run through November and December saw them soar up to mid table from being comfortably in the drop zone, and they bounced back from another dodgy run to also end the season very strongly with another great run of results through March and April. He’s improved already good players such as Dominik Solanke, he’s acheived Bournemouth’s highest ever Premier League points tally (if not quite their highest finish) and whether winning or losing Bournemouth have played a consistently exciting and competetive style of football under him. Definitely a manager with a top future and Bournemouth’s gamble has well and truly paid off.
04. PEP GUARDIOLA (MANCHESTER CITY)
Don’t worry, I’m not one of those “Fraudiola” people who will never give Pep any credit because “he only managers teams with a lot of money”. Plenty of managers have managed these clubs and done nowhere near as well and haven’t maintained his unreal consistency at the top. Even with Manchester City’s whole success being potentially based on fudging their accounts, it’s still been largely up to Pep to recruit the right players, build a consistent identity and keep them winning against stiff competition, which he’s still done on an amazingly consistent level, to the point where he’s both raised the standard in English football and changed the way it’s being played. While in my opinion not the greatest manager of all time due to his advantages, he is still comfortably the best manager of modern times and the best in the world still right now.
Pep was my choice for No. 1 last season as only the 2nd manager in the history of English football to win the treble, and you could argue he deserves it this season too for overcoming yet another incredibly tough challenge (from Arsenal this time rather than Liverpool) and becoming the first manager in the history of English football to win 4 consecutive top flight league titles, which had never been accomplished by a single club before let alone a manager. And he managed this even with key man Kevin De Bruyne injured for most of the season and losing crucial big game player Gundogan in the summer.
The reason he doesn’t make my top 3 this season though is that in my opinion just 1 trophy is not quite good enough for the club with the deepest squad in all of world football. While they performed impressively well to maintain their insane Premier League dominance (more so than last season actually), much like in 2021-22 they were poor in all the other cup competitions. They had a piss easy route in the Champions League and went out to Real Madrid at the QF stage, exited the EFL Cup to Newcastle’s B-team early on and rather surprisingly put in a poor and insipid performance in the FA Cup final against Manchester United, losing to one of the worst team’s in their local rivals recent history. Hell they didn’t even manage to lift the Community Shield, losing to Arsenal on penalties. Therefore the only trophies they managed outside of their routine league title were pretty easy captures of the UEFA Super Cup and Club World Cup. That’s not quite enough for a squad teeming with world class players though is it?
03. JURGEN KLOPP (LIVERPOOL)
Klopp’s final season at Liverpool saw him go out on somewhat of a high, not as good as his absolute peak years where he managed to acheive 90+ points in 3 seasons out of 4, as well as reaching 3 Champions League finals (winning 1) but likely about as good as you could hope for considering the current level of his squad.
Last season was probably Klopp’s roughest in his entire 9 years at Anfield, with an aged midfield and defense seeing Liverpool drop from regular title contenders and almost winning a quadruple to finishing 5th and dropping out of the Champions League for the first time since 2016.
Klopp can rest somewhat easy then in that he leaves the Liverpool squad in a better place than last year, with a revamped high octane midfield including the sensational Alexis MacAllister and the likes of Alisson, Mohammad Salah and Virgil Van Dijk all still on top form, but it’s also fair to say that they overperformed greatly this season compared to their peers in Manchester City and Arsenal.
To be clear, Liverpool’s squad was quite easily good enough to make top 4 this season but with Van Dijk pretty much carrying their defence all season and their numerous injuries to key men like Trent (especially without a lack of much depth on the bench in certain positions) it’s quite amazing that Klopp managed to keep Liverpool in a high quality title race with superb and much deeper City and Arsenal teams right up until the final month of the season. That, and amazingly managing to win the League Cup against Chelsea despite having only academy players to bring off the bench in Extra Time just highlight how much of a generationally great manager Klopp is, especially against the odds, and he’s going to be missed badly not just at Liverpool but in the Premier League as well.
02. UNAI EMERY (ASTON VILLA)
I have to admit the top 2 was a tough one, being about neck-and-neck between the current Arsenal manager and his direct predeccesor. I’ll explain my decision to not put Emery at No. 1 when I get to that position, but for now I’ll concentrate on the quite spectacular work Emery has done at Aston Villa.
While Emery’s reputation took a bit of a knock with his high profile failures at PSG and Arsenal which exposed big flaws in his tactical stubborness at the top level, the “king of the Europa League” who once won the competition 3 years in a row with Sevilla has since reminded people just how good of a manager he is at turning less fancied teams into the best of the rest in their top leagues, acheiving yet another Europa League win and a shock run to the Champions League Semi-Finals with Villareal and now his spectacular revival of Aston Villa’s fortunes.
Villa have always been very ambitious since their 2019 return to the Premier League but have simply until now lacked the right manager to take them to the very next level. Beloved Villa fan and promotion-winning boss Dean Smith could only do as well as establishing them as a proper Premier League club again, before things fell off once star man Jack Grealish left for Man City. Steven Gerrard, meanwhile, was a cancerous, toxic disaster of an appointment on every level, sucking the life out of a talented group and almost totally destroying all the ownership’s previous good work at bringing Villa back to a high level.
But after Gerrard was sacked in disgrace in October ’22 with Villa lumbering near the relegation zone playing grim football, Emery emerged as the club’s saviour and very easily the club’s best manager since at the very least Martin O’Neil and probably even going all the way back to Ron Atkinson and Brian Little in the early-mid 90’s.
Appointing a manager as accomplished as Emery was already viewed as a coup for Villa when they managed to bring him in from Villareal, but for Emery to so quickly turn Villa’s fortunes around and take them to the next level in such a short amount of time is utterly magnificent on his part.
While in my opinion he inherited an already strong group of players that didn’t need many real additions to compete and even at the time were recognised as being miles better than what their position of 16th indicated, but for Emery to take that and get them to 7th and a Europa Conference League position for the rest of the season was utterly remarkable, with Emery having Villa in genuine top 4 form from the second he walked through the door.
This season has seen his team maintain their high standards, now actually acheiving a top 4 finish and as a result Champions League football for the first time in the Premier League era, impressive given he’s had to contend with numerous injuries at times, but they were so good in the first half of the season particularly that even some inconsitency later on didn’t stop them dipping off. He’s also gotten the best out of Ollie Watkins, turning him from a decent but not very clinical striker to the man with the most combined goals and assists in the
Probably the only disappointment Emery and Villa fans will have from another excellent season under their popular manager would be the failure to win what seemed like a sure thing in the Conference League, bowing out rather pitifully in the Semis to Olympiakos despite undoubtedly boasting the strongest squad in the competition.
01. MIKEL ARTETA (ARSENAL)
It’s very enjoyable how Mikel Arteta continues to defy his critics who outrageously write him and Arsenal off every single season while wilfully ignoring all the progress he continues to make every single season to the point where he’s finally restored some pride that was lost a long time ago at one of world football’s biggest and best supported clubs.
Before Arteta, Arsenal were a club in seemingly terminal decline, going from a club seemingly too comfortable with merely acheiving Champions League football every year rather than pushing on further to getting much worse than that thanks to some insane mismangement of club funds on low level and aimless recruitment. Arsene Wenger’s final 2 years saw them drop out of the top 4, completing a consistent decline that had been quite obvious since 2014 at least with some FA Cup wins merely papering over big cracks. Then his successor Unai Emery left them sinking into the bottom half of the table by the time he was sacked a few months into his 2nd season. By the time Arteta (in his first proper managerial job at the club he once played at after a few years as Pep Guardiola’s No. 2 at Man City) was named as Arsenal manager in December 2019, Arsenal had dropped as low as 12th in the table, having only won 5 league games all season.
Fast forward 4.5 years and Arteta has built a side that has taken his former boss’s Man City superteam to the limit for the title in back-to-back seasons. It’s been very rough at times along the way. Arteta’s first full season during COVID was marred by an absolutely catastrophic first few months of the season that saw them flirting with the drop, before ultimately finishing 8th. The next season saw progress, but still saw a brutal lack of depth and inexperience cost them a long-awaited return to the top 4. But through all that Arteta was slowly but surely bringing excitement, a real identity and likability back to Arsenal the likes of which had been missing totally since the late 00’s.
Through a combination of blending in youth, expert and focused recruitment in every position (the big one being Declan Rice to finally fill that Patrick Viera-shaped hole in midfield Arsenal have had since 2005), ruthlessness in dispatching players no longer good enough for the level they want to reach (see: swapping out Bernd Leno in goal for Aaron Ramsdale, and then Ramsdale with David Raya) Arteta has at long last given the long suffering Gunners a team to proud of again, if nothing else.
Defending in particular has always been a seemingly cursed weakness of Arsenal’s, as has their abysmal record against the other top teams who had pushed far ahead of them in the modern game. Arteta has changed both of those, with Arsenal being one of the best teams in Europe and indeed the best in the Premier League this season defensively, conceding only 29 league goals. In their first season back in the Champions League, they finally progressed past the Round of 16 for the first time since 2009-10. Their last 2 finishes represent their highest league finishes since…yes, 2004-05, when Viera was last there.
The only criticism that can be seriously made at Arteta by this point from the army of weird bitter partisan pundits who keep writing him off and predicting him to lose his job every season and laughing off the suggesting that Arsenal will be competetive again and get inevitably overtaken again by Manchester United and Chelsea……yes……is that he hasn’t yet won a trophy since his surprise FA Cup win with a much worse team back in 2020, his first half season in charge. I won’t hold it too much against him for now, as he appears to have spent more effort on rebuilding the club and competing for the title rather than spending too much focus on the cups.
There’s definitely an argument he could be doing more to win trophies, but for now Arteta is doing one of the most impressive jobs in world football. As much as I considered Emery for top spot, I think it’s more impressive how Arteta has continously progressed his club every single season having inherited such a rotten broken squad and years of failure, while I’d argue Emery (for as remarkably quick and stabilising his effect his been) inherited much better foundations. That’s really all that’s separating this top two.
The Circled Square 
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