Alex Keble selects the five best teams in Premier League history ranking them by performance, tactics and achievements.
The Premier League’s on-going suspension has been difficult for football fans to bear, but it has at least given us time to pause and reflect, somewhat nostalgically, on seasons past, consolidating our view of football’s rich history and reaffirming our love for the sport in the process.
Liverpool, 25 points clear with nine games to go, are excruciatingly close to lifting the title and becoming one of the all-time greats. But where, exactly, would they sit on such a list? Here, we rank the top five teams of the Premier League era.
5) Man Utd: 1998-2001
The ‘Class of 92’ coming of age, the Treble in 1999, and the emergence of a more cultured Manchester United: this is arguably the most iconic period of Sir Alex Ferguson’s reign.
With David Beckham whipping balls in from the right and Ryan Giggs dribbling from the left, with Roy Keane battling from the base of midfield and Paul Scholes linking the lines in front, and with four rotating strikers in Dwight Yorke, Andy Cole, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, and Teddy Sheringham, this was primarily a team of partnerships.
United were still playing in a 4-4-2 at the time and the tactics were relatively simple - relying mostly on those brilliant pairings – although their Champions League excursions provided Ferguson with the rare opportunity to learn from Europe. Consequently United were considerably more tactically savvy, possession centric, and reactive to opposition flaws than any other team in England.
This was an era when scouting was minimal and few had the luxury of observing the tactical revolutions occurring in mainland Europe. Man Utd used this to their advantage, while Ferguson’s introduction of genuine squad rotation also gave his side the edge, winning three Premier League titles, one FA Cup, and one Champions League between 1998 and 2001.
4) Chelsea 2004-2006
Jose Mourinho’s explosive introduction to English football will always be one of the most important moments in the nation’s sporting history. He arrived with a tactical battle plan unheard of in England, one that focused on ultra-compression between the lines, on extremely resilient defending, and – most importantly – on a 4-3-3 formation.
England was still obsessed with 4-4-2 at the time, and so Mourinho’s 4-3-3 meant Frank Lampard was often a spare man in midfield, driving forward into space to score or feeding wingers Damien Duff and Arjen Robben. Claude Makelele introduced us to the Makelele role, while the deeper defensive line and targeted pressing in the middle third of the pitch were also new to the Premier League.
Along with Rafael Benitez at Liverpool, Mourinho began an era of thoughtful, defensive football, teaching England the value of tactical analysis. Chelsea conceded just 15 goals in his first full season and won the league with a then-record 95 points, before retaining the crown the following year.
It remains the purest distillation of Mourinho at his peak: not just a great tactical innovator, but a brilliant manipulator of psychology. His cult of personality ushered in an era of celebrity managers, permanently changing how the role is viewed.
3) Man City – 2017-2019
Between 2017 and 2019 Pep Guardiola’s Man City played perhaps the best football ever seen in England, while their centurion season and 198-point haul is unrivalled. Some will say the money spent diminishes the achievement, but we should not downplay how extraordinarily beautiful this team were to watch – and how different they were to Guardiola’s Bayern Munich or Barcelona sides.
It seems laughable now to think that critics wondered whether the Catalan’s tactical philosophy could work in such a physical division, but after finishing third in his first Premier League season question marks remained. However, Guardiola managed to embrace the chaos and overlay his aesthetics onto our rugged division.
From inverted full-backs to dual playmakers Kevin de Bruyne and David Silva, from 20-pass moves with tap-ins at the back post to the repurposing of iconic players like Fernandinho and Sergio Aguero, Guardiola will leave an astonishing legacy in English football. The complexity of City’s possession football was close to perfect.
2) Man Utd – 2006-2009
After three baron years most pundits began to wonder if we were reaching the end of an era. But Alex Ferguson pulled off a masterstroke in hiring tactician Carlos Queiroz as his assistant and Rene Meulensteen as head coach, creating the most complex, aesthetic, and successful team of his entire Man Utd tenure.
This period saw a return to the counter-attacking United of the early 1990s, only with considerably greater tactical nuance. The roaming, intertwining front three of Carlos Tevez, Wayne Rooney, and Cristiano Ronaldo was so blistering on the break partly because they had freedom to create their own symbiosis, and partly because none were traditional number nines. Quieroz and Ferguson had produced a striker-less formation.
Behind them, Michael Carrick, Owen Hargreaves, and Paul Scholes made United into the silkiest – and calmest – possession side of the era, a huge leap from the battling midfields that defined Ferguson sides up until that point.
Elsewhere, Park Ji-Sung’s work-rate played a major role in balancing the attacking mentality of the front three, while that back five was simply legendary: Edwin van der Sar, Patrice Evra, Nemanja Vidic, Rio Ferdinand, and Gary Neville is arguably even better than Mourinho’s 2005 Chelsea defence.
United were unstoppable. Between 2006 and 2009 they won three consecutive league titles and reached two Champions League finals, beating Chelsea in 2008 and losing in 2009 to the best team in the sport’s history: Pep Guardiola’s Messi-inspired Barcelona.
1) Arsenal 2001-2004
Guardiola’s Man City might have played better football. Mourinho’s Chelsea might have been more revolutionary. Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool might record a higher points tally. Ferguson’s Man Utd might have won more. But it is simply impossible to look beyond Arsenal’s Invincibles in the search for the greatest ever Premier League team.
Liverpool’s 3-0 defeat to Watford in February this year was yet another reminder of just how extraordinary it was for Wenger’s side to go a full 38-game season without defeat. It might never happen again.
The psychological strength this requires is testament to the resilience of the collective, but also to the physical and mental conditioning first instigated by Wenger in the 1990s. However, it is their tactical and technical brilliance that led to Wenger predicting an invincible season as early as 2002, following a superb 2001/02 double-winning campaign. They only won the FA Cup in 2002/03, before the crowning glory of 2003/04.
The key tactical feature was using a striker-less formation, with Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp both operating as false nines. Robert Pires, Freddie Ljungberg, and a marauding Patrick Vieira would charge into the unoccupied centre-forward positions.
Consequently Arsenal were a powerful counter-attacking team, and while Vieira and Gilberto made them elegant in possession, this was not tiki-taka as many have misremembered it. The back four was sturdy (though unusually good on the ball) and the team didn’t press high, making the Gunners closer to Mourinho’s Real Madrid than a Guardiola team.
Arsenal might have drawn 12 matches, but, despite what people say, football is not purely a results business. Where others on this list, including our runners-up Man City, can seem robotic in the automations of their passing moves, the Invincibles expressed genuine creativity. To watch Henry, Bergkamp, and Pires in their prime was an almost transcendental experience. It was football at its most beautiful - and at its very best.
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