Eight seasons. No trophy. The manager stays. In a sport where a bad month can end a job, that sounds extraordinary. Yet Arsène Wenger went through exactly that at Arsenal. So did Jupp Heynckes at Borussia Mönchengladbach. One had already delivered some of his club’s greatest triumphs. The other would leave without winning a single trophy there.
Their records raise a question the trophy count cannot answer on its own: what is a club getting from a manager while the cabinet stays empty?
This article looks at long runs without a top-flight league title, national cup or major European trophy at the same club. Supercups and lower-division titles are excluded. The dataset covers 35 selected clubs from 1955/56 to 2025/26. The periods below count complete trophyless seasons, rather than calendar years between victories, and the featured cases have been checked against club or competition histories.
Wenger: the years between two cups
Colour: seasons in charge, from first season to ten or more, as in the explorer. A line through a block: more than one manager that season. League Cup Europe. Trophyless run.
Explore Arsène Wenger’s full career →Arsenal won the FA Cup in May 2005 and again in May 2014. Between those victories came eight complete seasons without silverware: 2005/06 to 2012/13. The familiar nine-year drought measures the distance between the two finals. It does not mean nine empty seasons.
Wenger had already won three league titles. During the drought, Arsenal reached the 2006 Champions League final and moved from Highbury to the Emirates. In a statistical review published before the drought ended, the club noted that its results at the new stadium were very similar to those at the old one, despite the absence of trophies. Winning matches and winning competitions had become different stories. Arsenal’s review of Wenger’s first seventeen years.
The cup finally returned after Arsenal recovered from two goals down against Hull City. Wenger’s drought ended with a victory that had looked dangerously close to another disappointment. The FA’s 2014 final report.
Those years invite two readings: a proven manager maintaining a competitive club through change, or a club waiting too long for the next trophy. The empty seasons alone cannot settle that argument.
Heynckes: good enough for Bayern, without a title
Colour: seasons in charge, from first season to ten or more, as in the explorer. A line through a block: more than one manager that season. League Cup Europe. Trophyless run.
Explore Jupp Heynckes’s full career →Heynckes’s eight seasons at Gladbach, from 1979/80 to 1986/87, produced no silverware at all. Unlike Wenger, he had no earlier managerial triumph at that club to point to.
But the gap between zero trophies and poor work was unusually small. In 1984, Gladbach lost the German cup final on penalties. It also finished level on points with the Bundesliga champions, Stuttgart, losing out on goal difference. Heynckes kept the team competitive while important players left.
When Bayern appointed him in 1987, the media called him “the champion without titles”. He subsequently won the Bundesliga in 1989 and 1990. A trophyless eight-year spell had led to a bigger job. The Bundesliga’s account of Heynckes’s career.
This complicates any comforting claim that patience eventually pays. Gladbach’s patience never produced a trophy under Heynckes. It did produce a manager whose work Bayern wanted.
Shankly: the space between two teams
Colour: seasons in charge, from first season to ten or more, as in the explorer. A line through a block: more than one manager that season. League Cup Europe. Trophyless run.
Explore Bill Shankly’s full career →Bill Shankly won the league with Liverpool in 1966. His next major trophies arrived in 1973: another championship and the UEFA Cup. Six complete seasons passed in between, from 1966/67 to 1971/72.
Liverpool’s history describes the transition from his first great side to his second. Established players departed; Kevin Keegan, Steve Heighway, Larry Lloyd and Ray Clemence arrived. The manager stayed while the team changed around him. Liverpool’s Shankly profile.
Here the drought was followed by renewed success. It is a powerful example of what continuity can allow, but it cannot tell us what a replacement would have achieved. Looking backwards, a rebuilding period is much easier to recognise once the rebuilt team has won.
Simeone: five empty seasons after a championship
Colour: seasons in charge, from first season to ten or more, as in the explorer. A line through a block: more than one manager that season. League Cup Europe. Trophyless run.
Explore Diego Simeone’s full career →Diego Simeone’s longest drought in this dataset is more recent: five complete seasons, from 2021/22 to 2025/26, after Atlético’s 2021 league title.
Calling his entire reign short of trophies would be misleading. Atlético lists eight official honours under him. Five fit this article’s definition: two league titles, one Copa del Rey and two Europa Leagues. The other three are supercups. The Europa League won in 2011/12 counts too: he took over during that season.
When Atlético renewed his contract until 2027, the club highlighted both his trophies and Champions League qualification in each of his first eleven full campaigns. That statement offers a broader measure of his value than the latest entry in the trophy cabinet. Atlético’s explanation of the renewal. Its subsequent 800-match tribute still lists the 2021 championship as his most recent trophy. Atlético’s career tally.
Unlike Wenger’s or Shankly’s drought, this one has no ending within the data. It remains a question about how a club evaluates its present manager, rather than a completed story whose outcome we already know.
Arteta: the wait that ended
Colour: seasons in charge, from first season to ten or more, as in the explorer. A line through a block: more than one manager that season. League Cup Europe. Trophyless run.
Explore Mikel Arteta’s full career →The most recent drought in the dataset does have an ending. Mikel Arteta won the FA Cup in 2020, in the season he took over at Arsenal. Five complete seasons without a trophy followed, from 2020/21 to 2024/25; in the last three, Arsenal finished second in the Premier League. In 2025/26 the club won the league for the first time in 22 years. A season review of Arsenal’s title.
Read backwards, those five seasons now look like patience rewarded. Had Arsenal finished second a fourth time, the same seasons would be read as evidence against him. That is the problem this article keeps running into: the verdict on a drought is usually written after it ends.
Other long waits
The same pattern appears at clubs with different expectations. The table lists every run of six or more complete trophyless seasons under one manager at one club in the dataset, plus the three five-season runs discussed here. It leaves out early years in lower divisions and seasons without reliable manager data.
| Manager | Club | Trophyless seasons | Period | How it ended |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Arsène Wenger | Arsenal | 8 | 2005/06 to 2012/13 | FA Cup 2014 |
| Jupp Heynckes | Borussia Mönchengladbach | 8 | 1979/80 to 1986/87 | Left for Bayern |
| Les McDowall | Manchester City | 7 | 1956/57 to 1962/63 | Relegation |
| Ted Drake | Chelsea | 6 | 1955/56 to 1960/61 | Sacked in 1961 |
| Bill Shankly | Liverpool | 6 | 1966/67 to 1971/72 | League and UEFA Cup 1973 |
| Kees Rijvers | FC Twente | 6 | 1966/67 to 1971/72 | Left for PSV |
| Theo Vonk | FC Twente | 6 | 1986/87 to 1991/92 | Left without a trophy |
| Mikel Arteta | Arsenal | 5 | 2020/21 to 2024/25 | League title 2026 |
| John van den Brom | AZ | 5 | 2014/15 to 2018/19 | Left without a trophy |
| Diego Simeone | Atlético Madrid | 5 | 2021/22 to 2025/26 | Still open |
Ted Drake had won Chelsea’s first league title in 1955; the team was broken up, and he was dismissed in 1961 after an FA Cup defeat by fourth-tier Crewe Alexandra. Ted Drake on Wikipedia.
McDowall’s seven empty seasons after the 1956 FA Cup ended with City’s relegation in 1963. Keeping a manager does not guarantee a recovery. Manchester City’s account.
At Twente, Rijvers helped establish a team near the top of the league; Vonk later delivered three third-place finishes. Neither won a trophy there. Their six-season spells offered achievements that a title count misses. Rijvers left for PSV in 1972, where he went on to win three league titles and the UEFA Cup. Kees Rijvers on Wikipedia. Twente’s managerial history.
AZ’s assessment of Van den Brom is similarly revealing: four top-four finishes and two cup finals in five seasons. Five years without silverware can contain plenty of progress. AZ’s 2018/19 annual report.
What an empty cabinet leaves out
These managers shared long waits, but the waits meant different things. Wenger eventually won again. Shankly built another winning side. Arteta won the league. Heynckes left without a trophy and was hired by Bayern. McDowall’s tenure ended in relegation. Simeone’s story remains open at the dataset’s endpoint.
That is why “years without a trophy” is a useful starting point and an incomplete verdict. A club also has to judge the squad being built, the opponents being faced and the results it can reasonably expect. The difficult decision is recognising worthwhile work while it is happening, before a later victory makes the answer look obvious.