This is a chronological list of Manchester City managers, comprising all those who have held the position of manager for the first team of Manchester City F.C. and the club's predecessors West Gorton (St. Marks) and Ardwick. In the Football League era the club has appointed 47 managers; including pre-league managers and temporary caretakers more than 40 men have held responsibility for team selection. Nine managers have won major silverware while managing the team. The longest serving manager was Wilf Wild, who was in charge from 1932 to 1946, for a total length of 14 years 9 months. However, as Wild's tenure covered the entire length of the Second World War, in which no competitive football was played, he is not the man with the most games served as manager. Les McDowall, who was in charge from 1950 to 1963, a period of 13 years, managed the club for the most competitive games, a total of 592 games – a full 240 games more than Wild, who recorded the second most. The most successful Manchester City manager, as of 25 September 2021, is current head coach Pep Guardiola, who has won eleven trophies in six years from 2016 to 2022 and is the leading manager in terms of games won and percentage of games won. History Early years (1880s–1950s) In the era before league football, the position of manager involved many secretarial duties, arranging fixtures and the upkeep of the club's ground. Few accounts of the club's off-field affairs in the 1880s survive, and it is unclear who managed the club (then known as West Gorton (St. Marks)) between 1882 and 1884. The club's earliest managers were also players; the first three known managers (Frederick Hopkinson, Edward Kitchen and Walter Chew) all played in West Gorton's first recorded match in 1880. By 1889 the club had moved to Hyde Road and renamed itself Ardwick A.F.C. Under the management of Lawrence Furniss, the club joined the Football League in 1892 as founder members of the Second Division. Furniss became chairman a year later, and he and his successor as secretary-manager Joshua Parlby were responsible for Ardwick reforming as Manchester City F.C. in 1894. Under Sam Omerod the club achieved promotion to the First Division for the first time, and five years later Tom Maley became the first Manchester City manager to win a major trophy, the 1904 FA Cup. A financial