Your starter for ten: who was the last English manager to win the top flight of English football? Treat yourself to a half-time pie and a mug of Bovril if you said Howard Wilkinson, who took the First Division championship with Leeds United in 1992, the final season before the formation of the Premier League. Since then nothing: now the top four teams in the country are managed by a Spaniard (Guardiola at Man City), a Dutchman (Arne Slot at Liverpool) and two more Spaniards (Mikel Arteta and Unai Emery at Arsenal and Villa). The only three English managers in the top flight are Eddie Howe at Newcastle (currently 12th), Sean Dyche at Everton (16th) and Gary O’Neil at Wolves (19th). Of the two national teams, the women are managed by Holland’s Sarina Wiegman and the men by the freshly arrived new boy from Germany, Thomas Tuchel, though he won’t be unpacking his bags till January.
The power and wealth of the Premier League clubs mean they are unwilling to take a chance on a novice Englishman
So what is going on here? Are there no English managers of international stature? Spanish managers might dominate the Premier League but there sure as hell aren’t any English bosses in La Liga. In elite European club football no English manager has won the Champions League or its predecessor for 40 years. Unlike the previous eight years from 1977-84, when English managers won the trophy seven times. Now the grim-faced politburo who run Manchester United have iced the long-suffering Erik ten Hag, but you can bet your mortgage his successor won’t be English. The favourite is the highly regarded Portuguese Ruben Amorim, riding high at Sporting Lisbon. Partly, the enormous power and wealth of the Premier League clubs and their owners mean they are unwilling to take a chance on a novice Englishman.
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