Top 10 Successful Successors

There's so much doom and gloom around Old Trafford that we came up with this list just to cheer up David Moyes. Sometimes coming after a great can go rather well...

6) Cecil Potter (Huddersfield Town) Herbert Chapman was so good that he not only won four league titles with two clubs, he changed the way an entire sport was played by introducing an extra defender and a whole new formation. He's obviously better known as the man that guided Arsenal to two First Division titles (and basically a third - he died halfway through the final season), but before that he achieved similar success with Huddersfield, winning the league in 1924 and 1925. After the second he was tempted away to Highbury, but Town won a third consecutive title under Potter, who would then himself leave the following summer to manage Norwich. Town finished runners-up in the league in the next two seasons, but after that - the Yorkshire Electricity Cup of 1995 aside, obviously - they haven't quite hit the heights. 5) Stefan Kovacs (Ajax) Here's a thing - did you know Rinus Michels only actually won one European Cup? Given his reputation, you'd assume he'd have a big stack of them, piled precariously in his spare room somewhere. He of course built the great Ajax team of the late 60s and 70s, but it was Kovacs who capitalised on this work after Michels left for Barcelona in 1971. Kovacs won two European Cups and was in charge in 1972, the extraordinary year when Ajax won the European Cup, the Eredivisie, the Dutch Cup, the European Super Cup and the Intercontinental Cup. A solid haul. 4) Dettmar Cramer (Bayern Munich) Udo Lattek is probably regarded as the greatest coach in Bayern Munich's history, and with good reason. He won six Bundesliga titles and one European Cup over two spells in Bavaria, and indeed is the only manager to have won all three major European titles with different clubs. However, it was his successor at Bayern (the first time) who guided them to two of their three European Cups in the mid-70s. Dettmar Cramer took over at Bayern halfway through the 1974/75 season, and despite some early problems, led them to European glory both that season and the one after. Also, fun fact for dinner parties and so forth: Cramer is known as the father of modern football in Japan, after coaching their team at the 1960 Olympics, and helping to set up their first professional national league. One to use when someone starts talking about politics or religion or starts w*nking on about their kid doing a potato print at school. 3) Pep Guardiola (Barcelona) Such were Guardiola's achievements at Barcelona, it's easy to forget what an incredible job his predecessor had done. Frank Rijkaard took over at Barcelona when they were at something of a low ebb, very much in the shadow of Real Madrid (as well as a strong second tier of sides, such as Valencia and Deportivo La Coruna) having finished a distant sixth the previous season, With Joan Laporta, Rijkaard rebuilt Barca into something approaching the side we see today, winning La Liga twice and the Champions League once. Guardiola took that work and adapted and added to it, producing a side that, before he basically started second-guessing himself after coming up against Jose Mourinho and his assorted methods, will go down as one of the greatest club sides of all time. 2) Fabio Capello (AC Milan) Arrigo Sacchi was the epitome of the Italian manager - or, at least how Italian managers were (and occasionally still are) viewed in England. Supposedly dour, slow and reliant on catenaccio defence for success, Sacchi's Milan team of the late 80s was actually hugely entertaining. The Dutch trio of Frank Rijkaard, Ruud Gullit and Marco van Basten helped Sacchi and Milan to a Serie A title and two European Cups, before he left to take the Italy job in 1991. Capello, very much seen as Silvio Berlusconi's man because of his close relationship with the Milan owner, was not an especially popular replacement, but he topped up Sacchi's achievements with another European Cup and four more Serie A titles. Not bad. 1) Bob Paisley (Liverpool) There are basically two types of great manager: those who build a team from nothing and those who have a huge haul of trophies to show off. Ferguson is arguably the greatest Britain has produced because he is both, but perhaps the best example of the latter is Paisley. His task in following the great Bill Shankly was obviously made easier by the fact he had been there from the beginning - indeed, he was at Liverpool before Shankly, firstly as a player for the whole of his career and then as a physio until he was made assistant manager. When Shankly suddenly retired in 1974, Paisley was the obvious choice to take over, and over the next nine years he won 13 major trophies, including six league titles and three European Cups. As he once famously said: "Mind you, I've been here during the bad times too - one year we came second." This article first appeared on Football365