Mikel Arteta has done a brilliant job of turning Arsenal into a serious force, but he’s coming under increasing pressure to deliver silverware after enduring five successive trophyless campaigns.
“It’s a great achievement to not win a trophy in five years and still be the manager of a Premier League team,” Gary Neville said ahead of Arsenal’s trip to Liverpool.
“We thought those days were gone where you can have this kind of patience being afforded to you.”
Here are the 10 managers in Premier League history who lasted five or more seasons at the same club without delivering silverware.
Mikel Arteta
Arteta has, of course, delivered silverware at Arsenal.
The former Gunners captain worked wonders to guide a dysfunctional side, languishing in mid-table, to the FA Cup in his first half-season at the helm.
Unlikely victories over Manchester City and Chelsea at Wembley immediately made a statement that this was a young coach to take seriously.
And he’s made good on that promise, rebuilding the squad from Europa League stragglers to a side capable of competing with Manchester City and Liverpool for the biggest honours.
There can be no questioning how good of a job he’s done.
“The foundations have been laid,” wrote Jamie Carragher in his latest Telegraph column.
“Arsenal are a top Premier League and Champions League side, agonisingly close to being successful. But the wait for a golden moment cannot go on forever. Eventually, there must be an end product.
“The reality is we work in a sport which is all about outcomes, not ‘mitigating circumstances’ for falling short. Harsh as it sounds, judgments are based on the time and place in which you competed, not within their historical context.”
Harsh but fair. It’s now five full seasons without anything tangible to show for it. Reminds us of another North London team…
Mauricio Pochettino
“Again we’re going to have the debate whether a trophy will take the club to the next level,” Pochettino told reporters back in 2019.
“I don’t agree with it. It only builds your ego. The most important thing for Tottenham right now is to always be in the top four.”
Bold words.
The Argentinian coach finished as a runner-up in the League Cup, Premier League and Champions League over the course of his five full seasons in charge of Spurs.
Undoubtedly their greatest manager of the modern era, he still wasn’t able to quite drag them over the final hurdle to a trophy. The history of the Tottenham?
Tottenham Hotspur's Fernando Llorente celebrates with Mauricio Pochettino. Wembley Stadium, January 2019.
READ: The best Premier League teams that never won a trophy: Spurs, Arsenal, Leeds…
David Moyes
The Glaswegian’s first stint at Goodison Park lasted 11 full seasons – an era that was more about sturdy, top-half consistency than it was about glory.
The closest they got to a trophy was the 2008-09 FA Cup final, in which they squandered an early lead to lose 2-1 to Chelsea.
Naturally, when a trophy eventually arrived, at the age of 60, he celebrated like a madman. Fair play.
Sam Allardyce
Barely anyone under the age of about 25 will remember Bolton Wanderers being an established top-flight team. They were in the Premier League for 11 years.
Big Sam was at the helm for just over half (six) of those seasons, having guided the club to the Premier League via the play-offs in 2000-01.
Just staying in the Premier League was a big enough achievement for Allardyce’s Bolton, but they did reach the League Cup final in 2003-04 (which they lost to Middlesbrough) while four successive top-half finishes in the mid-noughties saw them twice qualify for the UEFA Cup.
Halcyon days. We’ll always be grateful to Bolton for providing us with some of the most iconic Barclaysmen of all time.
Alan Curbishley
It’s been 17 years since Curbishley was last in management, but his name would endure for years as a stock comedy answer on managerial shortlists.
As with Allardyce’s Bolton, your TikTok-addled youngsters will never know the joy of Curbishley’s Charlton from the early noughties.
Curbishley’s reign at the Valley lasted 15 years, culminating in two promotions to the Premier League, their second stint lasting for seven years.
Curbishley resigned after the sixth and they – unsurprisingly in hindsight – went down the following year.
Sean Dyche
Sensing a bit of a theme here?
Arteta’s name on this shortlist is a bit of an outlier. The long-serving coaches who tend to last in the Premier League without lifting silverware tend to be at lower-half clubs that aren’t really in a realistic position to challenge for major honours.
Like Curbishley back in the day, Dyche twice took an unfancied club up to the Premier League, and the second time around achieved an unprecedented period of top-flight stability.
Dyche’s ever defensively-sturdy Burnley finished 16th, 7th, 15th, 10th and 17th between 2016 and 2021 and only went down – since becoming a modern-day yo-yo club – after sacking him in 2021-22.
Arsene Wenger
Arteta’s name isn’t a total outlier, though.
Wenger’s reign at Arsenal lasted 22 years, during which he became the club’s longest-serving and most successful manager.
But during his legendary spell, the Gunners went nine years without winning a major trophy – 2005 to 2014 – a period in which they lost the Champions League final and two League Cup finals whilst consistently finishing 3rd or 4th in the league.
The Frenchman is also the last manager to oversee three successive 2nd-place finishes with no major silverware, from 1998 to 2001.
What happened after that? Wenger led Arsenal to a historic Double in 2001-02. Trust the process.
Harry Redknapp
Redknapp didn’t quite last five seasons at Tottenham, but he did serve as West Ham manager for seven Premier League seasons between 1994 and 2001.
That period saw the Hammers invariably finish in the bottom half while failing to make it past the early rounds of the domestic cups.
They did finish fifth in 1998-99, though, and make it into the qualifying rounds of the UEFA Cup.
That year, they also lifted the Intertoto Cup, but we’re not counting that as a proper trophy. Sorry, ‘Arry.
Joe Kinnear
There’s every chance that Kinnear’s name strikes up memories of that wild, short-lived stint at Newcastle United – of the funniest press conference in history and of ‘Yohan Kebab’.
But if you’re of an older vintage, you’ll recall the former Republic of Ireland manager working wonders at Wimbledon.
It’s a bit of a shame that he became a bit of a figure of fun in his latter years, because keeping the Dons in the Premier League for seven successive seasons is worthy of great respect.
Eddie Howe
Howe spent 11 years across two stints with Bournemouth, getting the Cherries promoted from League Two, League One and the Championship before establishing them as a Premier League side for half a decade.
He departed the Vitality following their relegation in 2020, but a big opportunity was always going to come his way after what he achieved down on the south coast.
And he showed that a manager is only as good as the tools at their disposal when he ended Newcastle’s 56-year trophy drought with the League Cup earlier this season.
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