Soccer Odds – New Blood Tops EPL Manager of the Year Odds

A bundle of top Premier League clubs are under new management this season. Pep Guardiola has taken the reins at Man City. Jose Mourinho is guiding Man United. And Antonio Conte is the head man at Chelsea. Unsurprisingly, those three top the odds to win Manager of the Year.

Their status as the favorites is unsurprising for a couple of reasons. First, they’re all with (what should be) exceptionally strong clubs, and this award is going to go to a manager who finishes near the top of the table. Second, all three are coming off disappointing campaigns.

If one is able to rebound with an EPL title, the manager will look all the more brilliant.

So far, City have looked like the team to beat in the EPL, so you can probably guess which name is at the top of the list.

EPL Manager of the Year Odds (2016-17)

Pep Guardiola (Manchester City): 3/1

Guardiola is a two-time Champions League winner (both with Barcelona). He couldn’t get Bayern Munich to the same lofty heights, but he did reach three straight UCL semifinals with the Bavarians and capture three straight Bundesliga titles. That makes it four straight league titles for the manager (counting his last with Barcelona).

He was FIFA World Coach of the Year in 2011 and La Liga Coach of the Year from 2009-12. If he can take City to an EPL title after their fourth-place finish last season, he’ll get a lot of praise.

Jose Mourinho (Manchester United): 4/1

Chelsea parted ways with Mourinho after a horrible 2015-16 campaign that saw the team finish tenth in the table. That said, he’s got three EPL titles on his resume (2004-05, 2005-06, 2014-15) and two Champions League crowns (2003-04 with Porto; 2009-10 with Inter Milan). He’s won this award three times already, claiming the honor in each of his EPL championship seasons.

United don’t quite have the roster strength of their intracity rival. But with Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Paul Pogba added to a team that already featured Anthony Martial, the Red Devils shouldn’t struggle for offense the way they did last season.

As long as the defense stays stingy, United should at least be in the mix for the league title coming off a disappointing fifth-place finish.

Antonio Conte (Chelsea): 6/1

Conte coached Italy to a solid showing at Euro 2016. Not many gave the Italians much of a shot going in; they didn’t have the top-end talent of teams like Germany, Portugal, Spain, and France. But Conte had his team uber prepared for every match. They were the most impressive side in the Group Stage and were unlucky to bow out to Germany on penalties in the quarterfinals.

As a club manager, Conte won the Serie A three times (2011–14) with Juventus.

Chelsea were the most disappointing EPL team last year, so a marked turnaround would make Conte look real good.

The Field:

Jürgen Klopp (Liverpool): 8/1

Arsene Wenger (Arsenal): 12/1

Mauricio Pochettino (Tottenham): 14/1

Slaven Bilic (West Ham): 20/1

Claudio Ranieri (Leicester City): 20/1

David Moyes (Sunderland): 33/1

Alan Pardew (Crystal Palace): 40/1

Photo Credit: Thomas Rodenbücher, CC BY 2.0 [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.