Ranking the Leeds United greatest managers is not the straightforward exercise it might look. This is a club that has been transformed by outsiders, betrayed by its own boardroom, rebuilt from the third tier and dragged back into the Premier League — usually by a manager who understood the city before he understood the squad. Some of the men below won trophies. Some of them saved Leeds from something far worse.
Here is our ranking of the seven bosses who shaped Leeds United, and why they earned their place.
The Leeds United greatest managers, ranked
1. Don Revie (1961–1974)
There is no argument and there never has been. Revie took over a Second Division club that was closer to relegation to the third tier than to promotion, changed the kit to all white in homage to Real Madrid, and built the most feared side in Europe.
Two First Division titles — 1968-69 and 1973-74 — sit alongside the FA Cup in 1972, the League Cup in 1968 and the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in both 1968 and 1971. The 1968-69 champions lost twice all season. The 1973-74 side went 29 league games unbeaten from the opening day. Just as importantly, Revie built a dressing room culture that outlasted him: Bremner, Giles, Hunter, Charlton, Lorimer, Gray, Reaney, Madeley, Cooper, Clarke, Jones. The full story of the Revie era is the story of the club itself.
He left in 1974 to manage England. Leeds have spent half a century trying to replace him.
2. Howard Wilkinson (1988–1996)
Wilkinson inherited a Second Division side going nowhere and, inside four years, made Leeds champions of England. The Second Division title arrived in 1990. The First Division title followed in 1991-92, in the last season before the Premier League rebrand, with Gordon Strachan driving the team and Eric Cantona arriving mid-season as the finishing touch.
More than three decades on, Wilkinson remains the last English manager to win the English top flight — a statistic that has aged into something close to a national curiosity. Our guide to how Leeds won the 1992 title explains exactly how he did it.
3. Marcelo Bielsa (2018–2022)
No manager in the modern history of the club changed the mood of a city faster. Bielsa arrived with Leeds drifting through their 14th season outside the top flight and immediately made them the most watched team in the Championship: relentless, man-marking, exhausting to play against and occasionally exhausting to watch.
The near-miss of 2018-19 was followed by the Championship title in 2019-20, ending a 16-year exile from the Premier League. Leeds then finished ninth on their return. Bielsa’s methods eventually caught up with a thin squad, but his standing at Elland Road is untouchable — there is a mural, and there is a generation of supporters who measure everything against him. Read more on the Bielsa years.
4. Daniel Farke (2023–present)
The highest-placed current manager on this list, and the ranking may yet look conservative. Farke took over a club in freefall after relegation in 2023, rebuilt it twice, and delivered promotion as Championship champions in 2024-25 with a points total that would have won most title races outright.
Where several of his predecessors failed, he then kept Leeds up. A 14th-place finish in 2025-26 secured top-flight status, and the Whites are now into a second successive Premier League season with a squad rebuilt again over the summer. Ethan Ampadu captains a side that has been made deliberately more robust. Our breakdown of Farke’s full managerial record puts the promotions in context — consolidation, not chaos, is his trademark.
5. Jimmy Armfield (1974–1978)
Handed the hardest job in English football: following Revie, and following the 44-day wreckage left behind by Brian Clough. Armfield calmed a furious dressing room, restored order, and took an ageing squad all the way to the 1975 European Cup final in Paris, where Leeds lost 2-0 to Bayern Munich amid refereeing decisions that supporters still dispute.
That he managed the transition at all — with dignity, and without a public feud — is a significant achievement in its own right.
6. Simon Grayson (2008–2012)
A boyhood Leeds fan who took charge in League One, Grayson won promotion back to the Championship in 2010 and, along the way, delivered the single most cathartic result of the club’s wilderness years: the FA Cup third-round win at Old Trafford, Jermaine Beckford’s finish, and a travelling end that had waited a long time for a day like it.
He did not have the resources to go further, but he stopped the fall. Given where Leeds had been — administration, a 15-point deduction and a financial collapse that nearly finished the club — that matters.
7. David O’Leary (1998–2002)
The most divisive entry, and the hardest to place. O’Leary’s young side reached the Champions League semi-finals in 2001 and the UEFA Cup semi-finals in 2000, playing with a fearlessness that briefly made Leeds one of the most exciting teams in Europe.
The reckoning that followed — the spending, the debt, the fire sale — was not his alone, and the boardroom carries the greater share. But the football was real, and so were the nights. That squad produced players who defined the next decade of English football.
The ones who did not make it
Brian Clough lasted 44 days in 1974 and remains the most famous failure in the club’s history. Jock Stein lasted a similarly brief spell in 1978 before leaving to take the Scotland job. Kevin Blackwell, Neil Warnock and Garry Monk all had their moments without sustained success, and Monk’s 2016-17 side came closer to the play-offs than most remember.
Where the debate really sits
The top two are settled. The interesting argument is third, fourth and fifth — whether a manager who won a promotion and changed a club’s identity outranks one who reached a European final with someone else’s team, and whether Farke’s steady rebuild will eventually be valued above Bielsa’s fireworks.
Ask again in two seasons. If Leeds are still a Premier League club with a squad that keeps improving, this list may need reordering. For now, see how these sides compare in our Leeds United all-time XI, and the full record of what they won in the club’s complete honours list. Squad and fixture updates are published by the official club website and the Yorkshire Evening Post.
