Highlights

• The Premier League have crowned a Manager of the Season every year since 1994.
• Only five coaches have won the award and not claimed the English top-flight title in the same campaign.
• Pep Guardiola was voted Manager of the Season for a fifth time after leading Manchester City to glory during the 2023/24 campaign.

More so than perhaps any other division, the Premier League is defined by its managers. England's top flight boasts some excellent players but is widely considered to be the best league in world football thanks largely to the elite group of coaches that have schemed and plotted a route to success in the competition.

The last player to win the Ballon d'Or while contracted to a Premier League club was Manchester United's Cristiano Ronaldo in 2008. Michael Owen is the only other footballer based in England to be crowned the best in the world this century. By comparison, the recent history of The Best FIFA Men's Coach Award has been dominated by Premier League managers.

The competition has handed out their own fiercely contested managerial accolade at the end of each season since 1994. From serial champions to one-season wonders, here is a full list of every Premier League Manager of the Season.

12 Kenny Dalglish

One win

When the billionaire Jack Walker bought his boyhood club Blackburn Rovers in 1991, he reached into a bottomless pit of money to acquire the best resources available. Before twice breaking the British transfer record to secure the services of Alan Shearer and Chris Sutton, Walker poached the best managerial talent available, Kenny Dalglish.

One of the greatest Liverpool players of all time was the first manager to break Manchester United's stranglehold on the freshly formed Premier League, leading Blackburn to the title in 1995. Dalglish undoubtedly had a talented set of players at his disposal - six of his squad made it into the PFA Team of the Year - but the experienced Scot is owed a great deal of credit for harnessing that quality.

GIVEMESPORT Key Statistic: Kenny Dalglish is one of only four managers to have won the English top flight with multiple clubs.

11 George Burley

One win

After four unsuccessful playoff runs on the spin, George Burley finally hauled Ipswich Town into the top flight in 2000. The Tractor Boys only spent £8.5m on a handful of new players - less than Arsenal splashed out on Francis Jeffers that same summer. Few envisaged survival for Ipswich, let alone the UEFA Cup qualification which they secured. Even Burley was sceptical:

Going into the season, I'd thought if we'd finish fourth-bottom it would have been a fantastic season, so to finish fifth was unbelievable for the players and myself. It was something you could never have dreamed of.

A prolific season from Marcus Stewart - whose tally of 19 league goals was only bettered by Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink - and the youthful exuberance of Titus Bramble at the back underpinned the unlikely charge into Europe. Burley was rightly recognised for the miraculous campaign, but desperately failed to consolidate Ipswich's position, slipping out of the top flight in 2002.

10 Harry Redknapp

One win

For the first two decades of the award's history, the Premier League Manager of Season almost invariably went to the coach that had led their team to the title. Tottenham Hotspur's Harry Redknapp became just the second manager to break that straight line after he was recognised for steering the capital club to Champions League qualification in 2010.

Spurs had not finished inside the top four of the English top flight since 1990 when Gary Lineker led the line in front of Paul Gascoigne's maverick magic. Jermain Defoe provided the sharp tip of Redknapp's vintage, feasting on the supply conjured by a young Luka Modric. The former Tottenham manager doesn't always elicit the warmest praise but he was quick to name each of his assistant coaches when he was presented with the award. "Really, I'm just part of the team," Redknapp insisted.

9 Alan Pardew

One win

Roberto Mancini led Manchester City to the club's first top-flight title in 44 years in 2012 but lost out in the race for Premier League Manager of the Season to Newcastle United's Alan Pardew. Chris Hughton's unpopular replacement guided the Magpies into the division's top five just two years after the club's promotion from the Championship.

Coasting on the scoring hot streak of the Senegalese duo Demba Ba and Papiss Cisse - who accounted for more than half of Newcastle's goals - Pardew secured the club's highest league finish since Sir Bobby Robson's legendary reign. Owner Mike Ashley rewarded Pardew with an eight-year contract in September 2012 before sacking him barely two years later.

8 Tony Pulis

One win

On the day that Tony Pulis signed his two-and-a-half-year Crystal Palace contract in autumn 2013, the Eagles were languishing in last place, boasting four pitiful points from the first 11 games of the campaign. No previous club to have ended November at the foot of the table had ever climbed higher than 17th. Palace had risen to 11th by the end of the campaign, the club's highest league finish in 22 years.

Pulis admitted that many people warned him against willingly jumping aboard Palace's sinking ship aside from one notable figure. "Sir Alex Ferguson," Pulis later revealed, "thought it was a job that could be done because of the club, because everybody had written it off, because of the fantastic supporters." As ever, Ferguson was proven emphatically correct.

7 Claudio Ranieri

One win

Just 11 months after overseeing a humiliating defeat to European minnows the Faroe Islands while manager of the Greece national team, Claudio Ranieri was being hailed as the best coach in the Premier League. The former Chelsea boss guided Leicester City to the most surprising league title in football history in 2016.

Ranieri was derided as 'The Tinkerman' during his time in west London for the number of tactical tweaks that he deployed but devised and stuck with a winning formula at Leicester. As many as 10 members of Ranieri's squad started at least 30 of the club's 38 league games during the 2015/16 campaign - no other team could boast more than seven regulars. The heartwarming nature of Leicester's triumph was perfectly captured by their deservedly lauded manager: "In an era when money counts for everything, I think we give hope to everybody."

6 Antonio Conte

One win

Antonio Conte's journey to becoming one of the managers with the best Premier League record in the competition's history can be traced back to the away dressing room at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium in September 2016. The Italian's new Chelsea team had been dismantled by their hosts and trailed 3-0. After the game, Conte sighed: "We have not got the balance and now is the moment to consider everything." But he had already discovered the solution.

The former Juventus midfielder switched to a back-three during the interval, introducing Marcos Alonso at left wing-back to provide a template which would not only underpin Chelsea's title triumph, but change the entire English top flight. Before Conte unveiled his 3-4-3 system that outwitted a division stuffed with the managerial brainpower of Pep Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp, Arsene Wenger, Jose Mourinho and more, just 2.7% of English teams lined up with three defenders. After Chelsea showed the power of their setup, that figure leapt to 27%, as outlined by The Athletic.

5 Jurgen Klopp

Two wins

As Jurgen Klopp celebrated Liverpool's first top-flight title in 30 years, he flicked through his contact list at 3am. A bleary-eyed Sir Alex Ferguson was on the other end of the line to listen to the effusive German inform him that Liverpool had, in fact, climbed back on to their perch.

The startling details of Liverpool's 2019/20 title can easily get lost in the sky-blue wash of Manchester City's modern dominance. Between March 2019 and February 2020, Klopp led Liverpool to 35 wins from 36 Premier League games, dropping two points from a possible 108. The German icon broke the 90-point barrier three times in four seasons but only won a single league title. The Premier League rightly recognised his influence in 2022 with another Manager of the Season award to soften the blow of losing out to City once again.

4 Arsene Wenger

Three wins

Arsenal's appointment of Arsene Wenger in 1996, poaching the scarcely known Frenchman from J-League side Nagoya Grampus Eight, was widely viewed with a collective sense of confusion. Manchester United's Ferguson derided him as "a novice" who "doesn't know anything about English football". Within two years, Wenger had pipped United to the title and been recognised as the Premier League Manager of the Season.

The revolutionary Frenchman sparked a dramatic culture shift at Arsenal which reverberated throughout the division. The binge-drinking habits which were laced throughout dressing rooms were swiftly ushered away. Beers were replaced by broccoli, smoking gave way to stretching. Wenger has taken charge of more Premier League games than any other individual in the competition's history and is the only manager who can boast an unbeaten league season.

3 Jose Mourinho

Three wins

Jose Mourinho warned everyone right from the start. The freshly crowned Champions League winner with Porto famously told an instantly bewitched gaggle of journalists at his introductory Chelsea press conference in 2004:

Please don't call me arrogant because what I'm saying is true. I'm European champion, so I'm not one from the bottle and I think I'm a special one.

The confident Portuguese coach quickly backed up his bold comments with results, defeating Manchester United on his Premier League debut with a prescient 1-0 scoreline. Chelsea conceded a staggering 15 goals in 38 league games across the 2004/05 campaign - matching the record low set by Preston North End in 1889, before goal nets were regularly used. Mourinho won the title twice more with Chelsea but failed to replicate his success at Manchester United or Tottenham.

2 Pep Guardiola

Five wins

There is an endless ream of reasons behind Pep Guardiola's sustained success in the Premier League (and beyond). While his insatiable work rate, delicate personal touch and unrivalled financial backing all play a role, the Manchester City manager's willingness to evolve is arguably his best asset.

After winning, you have to change, I know that from my experience as a player. The easiest thing would be not to touch anything.

The difference between Guardiola's setup from week to week - or even half to half - is significant, let alone the shift in strategy between seasons. The revered Catalan coach has won titles with wingers playing on their natural flanks and inverted dribblers, false nines and Erling Haaland. Klopp once warned that when facing Guardiola's teams: "You never know exactly what will happen." That isn't quite true. Usually, they win.

1 Sir Alex Ferguson

11 wins

The greatest manager in Premier League history has unsurprisingly dominated the seasonal awards. The sheer breadth and width of Sir Alex Ferguson's suffocating superiority over England's top flight is staggering. During the Scottish icon's final campaign in the division, he gave a debut to Nick Powell who scored during yet another title-winning season for Manchester United. Powell was two months old when Ferguson won his first Premier League Manager of the Season award back in 1994.

The cold-hard numbers of 13 top-flight titles, 27 Manager of the Month awards and 528 Premier League wins barely scratch the surface of Ferguson's supremacy. A master manipulator and revered man-manager, the wily Scot had the entire English game dance to his tune for two decades.

Stats via the Premier League. Correct as of 22nd May 2024.