Pep Guardiola’s Man City have been dominating the Premier League for years now. It only took Pep two seasons to win his first Premier League title with Manchester City. In his very first season, he finished third with 78 points, and the next season he created the Centurions as he won the league with 100 points becoming the first manager in Premier League historyto ever do so. From the 2017/2018 season till now Pep and his Manchester City team have completely owned the league. They have won the Premier League title every season except in the 2019/2020 season when they were edged out by Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool.
Last season he won the treble and completed a three-peat of the Premier League as he won it consecutively for the past three seasons. This season he is charging to win it again. Man City currently sits at the top of the table and although the margins are quite slim, we all know that Pep Guardiola’s Man City know how to dig and deliver win after win towards the tail end of the season when they need it. The same cannot be said for new challengers and title hopefuls; Arsenal and Liverpool as they have already dropped precious points which will only boost Manchester City’s chances of winning four Premier League titles in a row; a feat unmatched even by Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United.
It’s time to ask the question; is Pep Guardiola the best manager the Premier League has seen?
Trophies are the currency of success in football so we will be considering it highly in evaluating where Guardiola stands among the greatest Premier League managers past and present. One thing is sure though; among the present crop of premier league managers, Pep Guardiola is the best and it’s not even close. The only manager who comes close to him would be Liverpool’s Jürgen Klopp but in terms of trophies and Premier League performances, Klopp and his Liverpool team have been second best to Guardiola’s brilliance far too many times for their relationship to be called a rivalry like it was between them in Germany when Klopp managed Borussia Dortmund and Pep was the Bayern Munich manager.
Probably the only person that we can compare Pep to in Premier League history is Sir Alex Ferguson and his achievements with City’s next-door neighbours Manchester United. Sir Alex Ferguson managed Manchester United for 26 years and in that period won an astonishing 13 Premier League trophies with the club.
He also won the treble in 1999 among a host of other trophies in his time with Manchester United. He was able to sustain Man United’s dominance over different eras and fended off different rivals one of which resulted in the biggest rivalry in the Premier League; Sir Alex Ferguson vs Arsene Wenger. Pep vs Klopp is nowhere close to levels of that rivalry on and off the pitch.
Even when Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea, brought in José Mourinho and revamped the entire Chelsea team, Sir Alex still found a way to get Manchester United back on top. After Chelsea won the Premier League twice in the 2004/05 and 2005/2006 seasons, Fergie’s Man United dominated the league for the following three years as they threepeated it between 2006 and 2009 while beating Chelsea in the 2008 Champions League final along the way. He has won more Premier League trophies than Pep Guardiola, dominated the league across a longer period of time spanning multiple rivalries, and did it against tougher opponents.
Guardiola’s Man City may have set and broken different records in their dominant era such as winning the league with 100 points and scoring well over 100 goals in a title-winning season but the sheer number of Sir Alex’s trophies and the years he kept Man United at the top of English football still puts him ahead of Pep by a mile. It’s not impossible that Pep may equal Sir Alex’s achievements in the Premier League in the future but this can only happen if he decides to stay at City for as long as Sir Alex stayed at Man United. Judging from the past, managing one club for 26 years is not exactly in line with Pep’s modus operandi but that remains to be seen. Only time will tell whether Pep can maintain Man City’s hold on the Premier League for as long as Sir Alex Ferguson but as of now, Sir Alex Ferguson still remains the greatest manager in Premier League history.