Nothing like a bit of Christmas downtime and a football book to send your brain down a rabbit hole. A read on Brian Clough and Don Revie will do that to you too: two towering managers, two complicated blokes, both adored by plenty of their own players… and yet, by all accounts, not always the easiest to love.
That’s the thing with the truly great ones. They tend to be relentless. Single-minded. Often brilliant, sometimes prickly. And it opens up that old debate we all end up having sooner or later: if you’re picking the best managers to have worked in the old Football League/Premier League and Scottish football, who makes the cut?
Dynasty builders at the top
At the sharp end of this list, it’s the dynasty builders that stand out. Matt Busby, for everything he achieved and rebuilt, feels like one of those names you can’t argue away. Jock Stein too, for what he did with Celtic and what that meant in British football history.
And then there’s Bill Shankly. For Liverpool supporters it’s not just about trophies, it’s about a club being redefined from the ground up. Shankly didn’t simply win matches; he changed expectations, standards, culture. He made Liverpool feel inevitable.
Paisley or Ferguson? The hardest pick
The debate that never dies: Bob Paisley versus Ferguson. Both sustained excellence for years, which is the bit people underestimate. Anyone can have a season where everything lands, but staying at the top while everyone is hunting you is a different job entirely.
If you’re edging it to Paisley, even “just”, you can see why. What Liverpool did in that era was machine-like, and Paisley’s calm control of it all still feels almost unreal when you read back through the history.
Clough, Revie, Pep… and the Klopp question
Clough belongs in any serious conversation. Two league-winning sides is one thing; winning the European Cup twice is another. Revie, too, for building a powerful Leeds side that set the tone for an era, even if the feeling remains they didn’t quite end up with everything they threatened to.
Pep Guardiola gets in here on the treble alone in this list, with the added caveat that when you’ve had that level of spending, the European returns will always be part of the discussion.
And then, the one we all care about most: Jürgen Klopp. The line that he “dragged us up from the depths” rings true. He took Liverpool from nearly moments into a side nobody wanted to face, and for a spell we played football that felt like the centre of the sport. Where does he rank? That’s the fun of it. He’s in the room, and he deserves to be.
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