The dugout · 1899 to today · every man to lead Pompey
More than forty managers have taken the Portsmouth job since 1899 — from the Southern League pioneers to the two men who lifted the FA Cup, through the boom, the crash, and the long climb back. This is the full line of succession, and the handful who left a mark that outlived them.
Pompey's longest-serving manager by a distance. Tinn built the side that won the club's first major trophy — the 1939 FA Cup, a 4–1 rout of red-hot favourites Wolves at Wembley. Because of the Second World War, Portsmouth then held the trophy for a record seven years.
The most successful league manager in the club's history. Jackson delivered back-to-back First Division championships in 1948–49 and 1949–50 — the only two top-flight titles Portsmouth have ever won — with a side that also reached the 1949 FA Cup semi-final.
A World Cup winner as a player, Ball became a Fratton Park idol in the dugout. In 1987 he took Portsmouth back to the First Division for the first time in 28 years, playing bright, attacking football that reconnected the club with its supporters.
Redknapp led Portsmouth into the Premier League as First Division champions in 2003, kept them up, then returned to deliver the crowning glory: the 2008 FA Cup, the club's first major trophy in 58 years, and a first-ever run into European football.
With the club rebuilding in the basement division after administration, Cook won the League Two title in 2017 — Portsmouth's first silverware of the post-crisis era and the first rung on the ladder back up the pyramid.
Jackett brought stability through four League One seasons and a trip back to Wembley, winning the 2019 EFL Trophy against Sunderland in front of tens of thousands of travelling Pompey fans — the club's first trophy at the national stadium since 2008.
Appointed in January 2023 while still a player, Mousinho took charge of a club stuck in League One and, in his first full campaign, won the 2024 League One title — Portsmouth's first return to the Championship in twelve years. He followed it by keeping the club up in 2024–25, re-establishing Pompey as a second-tier side and giving Fratton Park a settled, forward-looking project for the first time in more than a decade.
Dates cover the main permanent appointments; several short caretaker spells during the turbulent 2000s and the 2009–13 collapse are folded into neighbouring entries. Southern League–era figures (pre-1920) predate the club's Football League membership. Compiled from the Portsmouth managerial records and cross-checked July 2026.
