At this point, it’s a tried and tested tactic for Premier League managers of the top tier’s most prolific teams to moan as much as is humanly possible about everything from their squad’s lengthy injury list, all the way through to the standard of officiating.
However, there are some Premier League managers from past and present who have made moaning into an art form, as fans almost expect the man leading their team to go on a weekly rant that will have blogs and social media forums buzzing for days after the big game.
Here are some of the most famous Premier League whiners from back in the day right up to this season.
Some managers will do everything possible to distract the media from how bad their team’s display was
Jose Mourinho
It really would be remiss of us to start anywhere else because Jose Mourinho took what was already a packed genre of Premier League managerial moaners, and went above and beyond to set himself apart as the king of the footballing grouches.
His propensity for instilling a sense of victimhood in his teams started at Chelsea, where he declared himself ‘The Special One’ because he believed referees and the FA were always quick to reprimand him compared to other more established Premier League bosses.
While he has been at pains to cast himself as a reformed man since moving across London to Tottenham, he has still been featuring almost weekly on the back pages of sports papers, especially when Tottenham’s September calendar was the busiest the club has ever experienced.
This led to the Portuguese talking about the need for him and his squad to make dramatic sacrifices in order to get by. In hindsight he should have been more worried about his team’s alarming slump in form post-Christmas rather than their early season fixture pile-up.
Many of these managers are hard taskmasters out on the training ground, demanding that their players always go the extra mile
Neil Warnock
While top billing in the English topflight has usually gone to men like Arsene Wenger, Alex Ferguson, and Jose Mourinho, there are some managers of smaller teams who have mixed it with the best, at least when it comes to moaning.
Neil Warnock is a case in point, having plied his trade everywhere from Scarborough to Sheffield United.
Some of his best moments were telling referee David Elleray that he needed binoculars, comparing his treatment by the media to the sort received by Osama Bin Laden, and describing El-Hadji Diouf as a sewer rat before promptly signing him for Leeds Utd. He also took a particular dislike to linesmen, who he berated on a regular basis.
To be fair to Warnock, though, of all the things he has moaned about during his career, fixture congestion is not one of them, with the old-school manager liking his squads to be compact and his players to get used to a packed schedule.
Alex Ferguson
When you are the most successful manager in a league’s history, people tend to follow your lead; so, when Man Utd’s messiah started his “Fergie Time” shenanigans it set the bar for just how much moaning Premier League managers of the future would try to get away with.
Another trend he was a trailblazer for was convincing world class players that they were better off focusing on their club careers than their international ventures, with him persuading the likes of Paul Scholes to knock the Three Lions on the head as quickly as possible.
No wonder he never wanted anything to do with the England job, having moaned for so long about the needlessness of international competitions and friendlies.
Jürgen Klopp
Prior to the 20/21 season, few fans would have expected to see this well-spoken German coach on such a list, but as Liverpool’s title defence has faltered so too has Klopp’s usually calm demeanour.
He has regularly lashed out at the Premier League’s hectic schedule and refereeing, blaming it all for his depleted squad limping through the season.
If his charges miss out on a top 4 place, then it will be interesting to see if his moaning reaches the levels of other managers mentioned on this list.
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