Every time the “best manager” chat starts, it turns into people talking past each other. Truth is, you’ve got to decide what you’re actually judging. Is it pure success, the cold trophy count? Or is it relative success, what a fella inherited, what he built, and whether the whole club still looks and feels like him decades later?
I’m keeping this to English football as well, not because the wider world doesn’t matter, but because it’s hard to compare properly if you don’t follow European, African, Asian or American football closely enough. You end up guessing, and that’s not the point.
Relative success: the builders and the changers
On relative success, I’m looking at the state of the club when the manager walked in, the scale of the lift, and whether they left something lasting behind. That’s why the list leans towards the proper architects.
For me it goes: Bill Shankly first, then Don Revie, then Matt Busby, followed by Nigel Clough and Arsene Wenger. Different eras, different resources, different pressures, but each of them shaped a club’s identity. Not just a good side for a couple of years, but a culture. You can still see their fingerprints: the standards, the expectations, the stories that get told.
It’s also why these debates get messy. Relative success isn’t tidy. You can’t just add up numbers and be done with it. It’s about context, and context is where the arguments live.
Pure success: trophies don’t lie, but they don’t tell everything
Pure success is a lot easier. You count the major honours and that’s basically your answer, even if it strips away all the nuance. On that measure I’ve got: Bob Paisley at one, then Alex Ferguson, then Matt Busby again, then Pep Guardiola, then Jurgen Klopp.
And I’ve got a personal line in the sand: you can’t really be top-five on pure success unless you’ve won both the top-tier league and the Champions League with your team. That’s the full set in the modern conversation, the domestic grind plus the European summit.
To my knowledge, Joe Fagan is the other English-based example of doing that outside my top five, which says plenty about how rare that double is.
Why Busby lands so high in both
Busby being third in both lists is the tell. Some managers are builders without the full trophy haul, others are serial winners without that same “club-defining” feeling. Busby, for me, ticks both boxes enough to be right in the conversation every time.
If you’re asking who I rate as the overall GOAT of English football management, blending both measures, I’d still lean Busby. Not everyone will agree, and that’s fine. These chats are half the fun.
Related Articles
About Liverpool News Views
Liverpool News Views offers daily Liverpool coverage including match reaction, transfer analysis, EFL context, tactical breakdowns and opinion-led articles written by supporters for supporters.