How Pep Guardiola compares with Alex Ferguson and English soccer’s other managerial greats

Pep Guardiola is leaving Manchester City after changing the face of English soccer over the last 10 years.

But how do his achievements at City compare with those of other great managers to have worked in England down the years, such as Alex Ferguson, Bob Paisley and Brian Clough?

The Associated Press dives deep into the numbers and records:

Guardiola always valued the domestic league higher than any other competition and he established an era of record-breaking dominance, leading City to six titles in his 10 seasons (60%) — including the unprecedented feat of four in a row (2021-24). Those six titles came in a seven-year span. He finished outside the top two on just two occasions.

As an overall percentage, only Paisley (66.67%) has a better title-winning record of modern-day managers. In his nine years at Liverpool (1974-83), he won the English league six times and was only outside the top two once.

Ferguson won the league title 13 times in 26 full seasons at United (1986-2013) but started out at a lower base, with the club being near the bottom of the standings and without a championship in 19 years when he took over. From the year of Ferguson's first league crown (1993) to when he retired, United's title-winning percentage was 61.90% — higher than slightly than Guardiola but lower than Paisley.

For a club of City's Abu Dhabi-fueled resources, its record in the Champions League under Guardiola has been underwhelming — and he acknowledges that.

One title (2023), one more final (losing to Chelsea in 2021) and just one other semifinal appearances (2022) is a disappointing return for a team widely regarded as one of the best in Europe for most of his reign. Guardiola can, of course, point to two more Champions League titles in his four-year stint at Barcelona.

Ferguson won the Champions League twice with United, though even that was also regarded as a below-par return considering the team's domestic dominance.

Of British managers, Brian Clough and Paisley hold the most enviable records. Clough won the European Cup with Nottingham Forest in back-to-back years (1979 and 1980) — a remarkable feat at a provincial club — while Paisley won the competition three times (1977, 1978 and 1981) in a five-year span.

Guardiola has won 17 major trophies in his decade at City, putting him only behind Ferguson in English soccer's all-time list.

Ferguson captured 28 trophies, but had 16 years longer in the job than Guardiola.

Next comes Paisley, with 14 major trophies, followed by former Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger (10, of which a record seven were FA Cups), Clough (9, across his spells at Derby and Forest) and former Man United manager Matt Busby (8).

Under Guardiola, City racked up two of the top three points totals in English top-flight history — 100 in the 2017-18 season (Guardiola's second in charge) and 98 in the 2018-19 season. In that seven-season span from 2018-2024, City set new standards in consistent excellence by collecting more than 90 points in four league campaigns — helped by having a top-class rival in Liverpool pushing it all the way.

That Liverpool team under Jurgen Klopp picked up 99 points in 2019-20, when breaking up City's run of titles, and 97 points in 2018-19 when taking City to the final game of the season.

In the era when it was two points for a win (before 1981), Liverpool held the record for most points in a season with 68 in 1978-79. That equates to 98 points if there had been three points for a win, but Liverpool played 42 games instead of the current 38-game campaign.

Also notable was Chelsea's haul of 95 points in 2004-05, the first season of José Mourinho's first spell there. That was a record at the time.

Guardiola has never been shy to highlight the records he has set at City — and there have been many.

The only team in the nearly 140-year history of English soccer to win four top-flight league titles in a row. The first team to win 100 points in a top-flight season (2017-18). The most goals — 106 — scored in a single Premier League campaign (also 2017-18). The first team to win the domestic treble of the league, FA Cup and League Cup in the same season (2018-19).

Guardiola also emulated Ferguson in both winning the Premier League-FA Cup-Champions League treble (United in 1999, City in 2023) and wrapping up a Premier League title with five games still to play (United in 2001, City in 2018) — a record until that was broken by Liverpool in 2020 (seven games to play).

Something Guardiola never managed, however, was Wenger's greatest feat of going an entire league season unbeaten (with Arsenal in 2004).

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

Manchester City's head coach Pep Guardiola greets fans at the end of the English Premier League soccer match between Manchester City and Brentford in Manchester, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson)

Manchester City's head coach Pep Guardiola waits for the start of the English Premier League soccer match between AFC Bournemouth and Manchester City in Bournemouth, England, Tuesday, May 19, 2026. (AP Photo/Ian Walton)

FILE - Manchester City's head coach Pep Guardiola greets fans at the end of the English Premier League soccer match between Manchester City and Brentford in Manchester, Saturday, May 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Dave Thompson, File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Matthew Perry paid Kenneth Iwamasa $150,000 a year to be his live-in personal assistant. His role for the “Friends” star would expand to drug messenger, addiction enabler and de facto doctor, according to court filings.

Iwamasa injected Perry with the doses of ketamine that would prove fatal on Oct. 28, 2023, and then left the actor to run errands. He returned to find Perry dead in the Jacuzzi.

The ex-assistant became the first to reach a plea deal of five people indicted in connection with Perry's death. On Wednesday, he'll become the last to be sentenced. Prosecutors are asking for a prison term of three years and five months. That's more than the 2 1/2-year sentence of the doctor who sold Iwamasa ketamine and taught him to inject it into Perry, but far less than the 15-year sentence of the admitted drug dealer who sold Iwamasa the final doses.

Iwamasa, 60, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in death and became the case’s most important witness in the indictments of his four co-defendants. That is virtually certain to lead to a lighter sentence.

“I have no sympathy for Kenny Iwamasa,” Perry's younger sister Caitlin Morrison wrote in a letter to the judge. “I wasn’t there the night my brother died. I cannot read Kenny’s thoughts. I will never know if the lethal dose of ketamine was only lethal by accident. But I know that when Kenny left the house, he was doing one of two things. He was either escaping from something he knew he had done or he was willfully abandoning a vulnerable person in a dangerous situation.”

Perry's mother Suzanne Morrison wrote that her son and the family had known Iwamasa for decades, and that relatives were relieved when Perry, who'd had recurring struggles with addiction throughout his life, hired the assistant in 2022.

“Mathew trusted Kenny. We trusted Kenny. Kenny’s most important job — by far — was to be my son’s companion and guardian in his fight against addiction,” she wrote. “We trusted a man without a conscience, and my son paid the price.”

Iwamasa's lawyers argued that he was an employee doing the bidding of his boss.

In a presentencing filing, they said Iwamasa had “a particular vulnerability to the relationship dynamic which he fell into with the victim. In short, he could not 'simply say no.' That inability had tragic consequences.”

Suzanne Morrison said Iwamasa knew he could call any family member should Perry start making drug demands, and his job would be safe.

Perry's mother wrote, “When he had killed my son, he kept a sharp eye on me. He sent me songs, he drew a little map to help me find my way around the cemetery. If he saw a rainbow — one of Matthew’s favorite things — he would call me. He insisted on speaking at Matthew’s funeral. He clung to me and the family as if he was somehow the good guy who tried to save Matthew.”

She said Iwamasa expected a financial payout, and when it was clear he wouldn't get one, he threatened legal action.

Iwamasa did speak at the funeral, which would later leave the family disgusted.

“The person responsible for my brother’s death stood up and addressed the people who loved him most,” another sister, Madeline Morrison, wrote. “That is like a cruel joke I still struggle with. He didn’t just take my brother’s life — he tainted our final memories of saying goodbye.”

The LA County Medical Examiner found that ketamine, a surgical anesthetic that has become widely used for other purposes both legal and illegal, was the primary cause of Perry's death. Drowning was a secondary cause.

On the day of Perry's death, Iwamasa gave police a list of all the medications Perry was taking, but he left off ketamine and said nothing about the injections, prosecutors said.

After investigators served a search warrant on the house in January 2024, that began to change, and he would slowly admit his role in Perry's death. Iwamasa said he had been giving Perry six to eight injections of ketamine per day in the last days of his life, and that Perry had told him, “Shoot me up with a big one” on the day he died.

Iwamasa said he had worked with middleman Erik Fleming, who was sentenced to two years in prison May 13, to get drugs from dealer Jasveen Sangha.

In his first text to Fleming, Iwamasa said, “Alfred here batmans butler. He said I can text you directly.”

Madeline Morrison wrote that when the truth emerged, “It felt like my brother died all over again. Everything I believed about the day he died—everything Kenny told us—was a lie. I had to relive Matthew’s death from an entirely new and devastating perspective.”

Iwamasa pleaded guilty in August 2024 before the case became public. Wednesday will be his first court appearance since.

Perry, who died at 54, became one of the biggest stars of his generation as Chandler Bing on “Friends,” NBC’s culture-changing sitcom that ran from 1994 to 2004.

“He was my Matso, my Manew,” his mother wrote. “He was, in spite of all we went through, my heart and my soul.”

FILE - Suzanne Morrison, mother of Matthew Perry, leaves the court in Los Angeles on Wednesday, April 8, 2026, after a federal judge handed down a sentence of 15 years in prison to Jasveen Sangha, who pleaded guilty to selling "Friends" star Perry the ketamine that killed him in a 2023 overdose. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)