Since Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City lifted the Premier League title with 100 points in 2018, they have enjoyed unprecedented dominance at almost every stadium across the country.
Talk to West Ham United fans, who, since moving from Upton Park to the London Stadium in 2016, have not seen their team beat City at home in the league. Selhurst Park is another of Guardiola’s happiest hunting grounds, with his side winning in seven of nine league trips to Crystal Palace’s stadium. Since Everton smashed Guardiola’s City 4-0 in his first trip to Goodison Park in 2017, City have taken their revenge, racking up an eight-game winning streak at the ground across all competitions.
But, as you may have heard, his record at the stadium a short walk south of Goodison less impressive. Guardiola has struggled at Anfield since losing 1-0 on New Year’s Eve in 2016 and is still waiting for his first away win for Liverpool with fans in attendance, a run continued by Sunday’s 2-0 defeat.
Guardiola is not unlike many of the best managers to have graced England’s top flight. Every Premier League-winning manager has a ground where they have lost more than they have won. In some cases, the discrepancy is startling.
Here, The Athletic analyses the ‘hoodoo’ grounds of every manager to have lifted the Premier League trophy.
Pep Guardiola
Anfield is where Guardiola’s City get the least joy.
By the time Guardiola arrived in the Premier League in 2016, the green shoots of Jurgen Klopp’s first few months in charge at Anfield had started flowering, and they were developing into a side that looked capable of competing for trophies domestically and in Europe. Within a couple of years, aided first by Mohamed Salah and Virgil van Dijk’s arrivals, then Alisson and Fabinho shoring up their defensive weaknesses in 2018, Liverpool had risen from top-four contenders to one of the best sides in league history.
Combined with the emerging quality at Klopp’s disposal and the famed Anfield crowd that never fails to boost the home side in big, consequential matches, it’s no surprise that Guardiola’s only away win at Liverpool came in 2021 (11.1 per cent win rate), when there were no fans in attendance due to Covid-19 restrictions. With a brace from Ilkay Gundogan and late goals from Raheem Sterling and Phil Foden, Guardiola’s victory at Anfield was a decisive 4-1 result, aided by an injury crisis in Liverpool’s defence that saw Fabinho and Jordan Henderson line up together at centre-back.
While it is not quite as poor as his record away against Liverpool, he has also struggled to pick up wins at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Before collecting his first league win at the ground — which opened five years ago — in May, Guardiola had lost four consecutive Premier League matches away at Spurs.
Jurgen Klopp
Fittingly, it’s at the Etihad Stadium where Guardiola’s great Premier League rival struggled the most.
Despite Klopp putting up a valiant fight as Liverpool manager — recording typically title-winning points totals of 97, 99 and 92 but only winning the league once — Guardiola’s supremacy in the trophy cabinet is reflected in a dominant record against their closest competitors at home.
Like Guardiola, Klopp won just once at the Etihad Stadium in nine league matches, an 11.1 per cent win rate, the same as Guardiola’s at Anfield. The German’s sole league win away at City came before Guardiola’s arrival, beating Manuel Pellegrini’s side 4-1 in November 2015.
City’s 4-0 dismantling of Liverpool in 2020 and the 4-1 win at home in 2023 will go down as two of Guardiola’s best results considering the opposition, but it’s perhaps harsh to describe the Etihad as a ‘hoodoo’ ground for Klopp, given Liverpool went to the Etihad in 2018 and won 2-1 in the Champions League on their way to reaching the final.
Sir Alex Ferguson
Arsenal are often cited as United’s greatest rivals under Ferguson, but it’s in west London where the 13-time Premier League champion has his worst record.
This is perhaps a surprise, given Chelsea were not typically title contenders until over a decade after Ferguson had won his first Premier League trophy. The Scotsman often struggled to pick up three points at Stamford Bridge (23.8 per cent). Italian manager Gianluca Vialli recorded one of Chelsea’s most famous wins over United in 1999, beating the defending league and Champions League winners 5-0 at home and ending a 29-game unbeaten streak.
Ferguson’s last league win at Stamford Bridge came in 2002, before Chelsea emerged as perennial title contenders under Jose Mourinho. The 3-0 win came thanks to goals from Paul Scholes and future United interim bosses Ruud van Nistelrooy and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Ferguson ended a decade-long wait for a league win at Stamford Bridge in 2012, beating Chelsea 3-2 on their way to winning the title in his final season.
“They have had a terrific record against us since I came in and even before that,” Ferguson said in his press conference, as reported by The Telegraph, before his final league trip to Stamford Bridge.
Jose Mourinho
Unlike Guardiola, Klopp and Ferguson, Mourinho’s ‘hoodoo’ ground did not belong to one of his title rivals. Strangely, given that Newcastle United finished in the bottom half for most of Mourinho’s Premier League tenure, he struggled at St James’ Park.
It took eight attempts for Mourinho to travel to Newcastle and win, breaking the run with a 3-1 win in July 2020 as Tottenham manager. Mourinho lost four times in nine trips to Newcastle, the most surprising of which came in 2014, when an unbeaten Chelsea were defeated 2-1 in December by a Newcastle side that finished just four points above the relegation zone.
Mourinho has an 11.1 per cent win rate at Newcastle in the league — the same as Klopp’s at Etihad and Guardiola’s at Anfield.
“It is the best day of the year because of the opposition,” then-Newcastle manager Alan Pardew told broadcasters, as reported by BBC Sport, after that win in 2014. “If someone had told me we were going to beat Chelsea and have six minutes of stoppage time, they would have (Didier) Drogba, Diego Costa and all of them on the pitch, and we would be down to 10 men… I wouldn’t have believed them.”
Arsene Wenger
Given Ferguson’s United were dominant during most of Wenger’s tenure, it is not surprising that Old Trafford is where the Frenchman has his worst managerial record.
In 22 trips to face United, Wenger lost 13 times, drew six and won on just three occasions (13.6 per cent). The most humiliating of the 13 defeats was an 8-2 loss in 2011, Arsenal’s heaviest in the league since 1927. The most famous is the ‘Battle of the Buffet’ (aka, Pizzagate) in 2004. After United ended Arsenal’s 49-match unbeaten run with a 2-0 win, a scuffle broke out between both sides in the tunnel, and a pizza, thrown by World Cup winner Cesc Fabregas in a post-match tunnel scuffle, hit Ferguson.
However, Wenger’s true ‘hoodoo’ trip was to Stoke City.
Under Tony Pulis, a coach renowned for his long-ball footballing philosophy, Stoke won five out of eight matches at home against Arsenal from 2008 to 2014. According to Pulis, Wenger, who described Stoke’s tactics towards goalkeepers as more rugby than football in 2010, wrote a letter to the FA about the length of the grass at Stoke’s home stadium.
“The away players were getting off the bus, they looked drained before they’d even started the game,” former Stoke striker Peter Crouch said in an interview with Pulis on That Peter Crouch Podcast. “I think back to Arsenal — they got off the bus and just didn’t want to be there.”
“(Wenger) never enjoyed coming back to the Britannia,” Pulis added. “He came one year and complained about the grass being too long. The referees and the linesmen had to come and measure the grass. He talked about banning throw-ins and saying they shouldn’t be allowed. It was all music to us.”
The others
Antonio Conte, who won the Premier League in 2017 with Chelsea, has lost in all four trips to Old Trafford across spells at Chelsea and Spurs. His Italian counterpart Carlo Ancelotti, who lifted the league title with Chelsea in 2010, also fared badly in the league across Manchester, losing his four trips to the Etihad as a Premier League coach.
However, Ancelotti did book a trip to the semi-finals of the Champions League at the Etihad, with his Real Madrid side beating City on penalties in April.
Former Blackburn Rovers and Liverpool boss Kenny Dalglish failed to win as a Premier League manager at two stadiums: Old Trafford and The Dell, Southampton’s ground until 2001. Claudio Ranieri (14.3 per cent), who won the Premier League in 2015-16 with Leicester City, beat United once in seven league trips to Old Trafford.
Like his successor at City, Pellegrini struggled at Anfield through spells in charge of the Manchester club and West Ham, travelling to Liverpool on four occasions and losing each time. He has also failed to win at the Emirates Stadium, losing twice and drawing twice in four matches.
Pellegrini’s predecessor at City, Roberto Mancini, might have the most obscure hoodoo list of them all: he has lost every game in the league at Goodison Park and never won at Stoke City (four draws) and the Stadium of Light (one draw and three defeats).
(Top photo: Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)
