A new series of Celebrity Traitors starts this week, and that leaves us with quite literally no choice but to rank the 20 Premier League managers on how we reckon they’d get on in the castle.

We’re sorry, but the laws of crossover content are immovable.

We did it for the normie version of the series back in January, but thanks to the ridiculous nature of modern Premier League manager churn there is actually hilariously little repetition.

20. Mikel Arteta

Should be brilliant, is in fact f*cking useless and instantly voted out. There are two things that will count against you early on in this game. One, being really annoying. Two, behaving in a way that makes people think you’re a traitor.

Now, one of the many, many flaws of The Traitors format is that there is no real benefit to voting off traitors early in the show. The Traitors is very much the of game shows in that no matter how well the innocent people do, they can always just artificially add more traitors.

So in those early days it’s much worse to be annoying. And Arteta would be so annoying. And would behave far more like a traitor if he were in fact a faithful; either way, he’s done for.

He’d be unbearably annoying in a way that has such obvious traitor vibes. After he’s spent the first day nicking everyone’s keys and wallets to test their resilience before blasting loud music during a tense and intricate task to recreate a truly hostile atmosphere there’s simply no way he’s surviving the round table.

He would be a near-unanimous choice, albeit with ‘Mikel’ spelled in 15 different ways, including at least one ‘Michael’, one person apparently attempting to eliminate Mikkel Damsgaard and multiple attempts to sweeten the pill by putting a little love heart as the dot on the i.

“I’m sorry Mikel, but I’ve gone for yourself. You’re either a traitor, or very annoying, or both, and for any of those reasons it’s off you pop.”

19. Alvaro Arbeloa

Constantly bangs on about a better game show he briefly appeared on in Spain, to the irritation of all around him. Murdered on around day five, forgotten entirely by day seven, his forgettable portrait unnoticed and unmourned upon the breakfast room wall.

18. Michael Carrick

Complains constantly about the unfairness of having to complete more than one task a week. Loses the breakfast room and is killed off before the season is even halfway through.

17. Pierre Sage

Almost immediately twigged as a traitor, voted off at the second roundtable in an early win for the faithful. Following Sage’s unfortunate early demise the traitors react in the only way they feel they possibly can, and recruit Roy Hodgson.

16. Gary O’Neil

Spoke well at the first roundtable, I thought. But so too did the traitors, who duly saw him off first chance they get lest he blow the whole game wide open.

15. Roberto De Zerbi

Violently murders three fellow contestants who he deems ‘the most fragile players I’ve ever seen’ after failing to maintain the press after a promising start pushing a giant misfiring catapult up a hill. Only problem is, he isn’t actually a Traitor.

14. Unai Emery

Astonishingly easy to picture Unai Emery pulling back the dark, slick Traitor’s hood to reveal that dark, slick hair while stood around a barrel at the top of a fake castle turret for some reason. Good ebening indeed, Mr Emery.

Alas, the very ease with which such a thing is imagined leads to Emery being voted off quick-smart by his suspicious peers, regardless of whether he is in fact faithful or traitor.

For reasons we haven’t yet fully thrashed out but will be very compelling when we get there, this early exit will be Tottenham’s fault.

13. David Moyes

Our major gripe with pretty much every series of The Traitors is that, if we were in there, we would simply spend all our time playing snooker and nobody ever seems to do that.

Sure, that might be because people playing low-quality snooker does not exactly provide the tension and contestant interplay that forms the bedrock of the show.

Watching us try to scrape together a 20 break while loudly blaming the nap of the cloth after missing a red to middle by several inches is simply not appointment-to-view TV.

But the reality is that we find it impossibly hard to believe that sharing assorted clandestine conversations about your latest suspicions with a load of people you are suspicious of and who are suspicious of you is simply far less appealing than a little bit of the ol’ pot the red and screw back for the yellow, green, brown, blue, pink and black.

We can’t really prove this, or even really explain it, but we feel deep in our bones that Moyes is a man after our own hearts on this one.

Everything about him absolutely screams Loves His Snooker. The Scottishness. The pallid skin tone that points more readily to a life inside dark and smoky snooker halls than out in the glare of a football stadium. Everything about Moyes seems far more green baize than green sward.

But it’s also probably not really a winning strategy, ironically soon leaving our hero needing snookers.

12. Daniel Farke

If anything, for me, Claudia, he’s almost good a faithful.

A soothing-voiced people pleaser, he soon establishes himself as a key uniting force among the faithful, bringing people together around the kitchen island and smoothing out any issues after a disappointing task.

Next time, he suggests, let’s try having three people in the crucial role instead of two. All agree this is a fine scheme.

But, inevitably, this puts him on the traitors’ hit list and he is murdered to death midway through the series having never received a single vote at the roundtable.

Genuine fury erupts at the breakfast table the following morning. Fears mount that the game’s gone and several remaining contestants come out as Against Modern Traitors.

11. Frank Lampard

Voted out just after the halfway point after bungling a task so egregiously the consensus is it could only be subterfuge. Attempts a Lampardian transition at his big departure reveal a la James from earlier this year. Everyone agrees they should have got rid of him sooner.

10. Sergej Jakirovic

Gets a surprisingly long way because literally not one other competitor can identify him from a headshot and, be honest, neither can you.

9. Enzo Maresca

Voted out of the competition altogether after a misunderstanding over some widespread and, in hindsight, very obvious cheating that didn’t really have anything to do with him.

8. Marco Rose

It’s a fair way into the competition and you suddenly realise that he hasn’t actually succeeded yet at any of the tasks. Or correctly identified a traitor.

You retain absolute conviction that he will do both those things. “He’ll be fine,” you say out loud to nobody in particular while your cat gives you yet another withering look before haughtily striding off to go and lick its own bollocks.

7. Andoni Iraola

Harshly voted out after a long run of impressive performances at tasks and some astute Traitor-identifying are followed by a barren run of form. There was a process that needed trusting here, you damn fools.

6. Oliver Glasner

Even his relatively short time as Nottingham Forest manager will surely have left him well prepared for living under constant fear of being stabbed in the back by a who has developed an uncomfortably joyful relish for binning off those who displease him having developed a real taste for it. Comfy top-half finish.

5. Keith Andrews

Makes it as far as the season finale even though you can’t really remember anything much he’s done beyond one particular task that involved yeeting something a long way with surprising pace and accuracy. He must be doing something right, you conclude. For reasons you can’t fully articulate, you’re happy for him.

4. Fabian Hurzeler

A thoughtful and methodical approach to the tasks helps put plenty of cash in the prize pot, which is classic Brighton really when you think about it.

But the recent acquisition of a Turkish hair hat is an inherently dishonest move that raises inevitable suspicion from the rest of the cohort.

The financial benefits of his quick mind mean both faithful and traitors alike keep him in the game for as long as possible, though, before the traitors decide he might be too clever and reluctantly kill the golden goose.

3. Matthias Jaissle

Turns out to be a despite widespread grumbles before the big kick-off to the effect of “Well I’ve never heard of him. Thought this was meant to be Traitors?”

2. Regis Le Bris

Winning the Traitors involves a lot of luck but there has been one proven strategy that has worked over the years – sit back, let others do the talking then strike.

One manager who fits that bill is Regis Le Bris whose Sunderland side continue to catch everyone by surprise. While the rest of the faithful are off in their big armchairs, Le Bris is plotting. It all works exactly like his Sunderland team, but sadly just with slightly less Brian Brobbey.

He’s picked out the traitors from the start but doesn’t want to give the game away, knowing he needs to choose his moment.

Le Bris makes it to the final, and would’ve pocketed the lot had he not right at the very, very last fallen victim to the impossible charm of Alonso’s immaculately groomed yet undeniably treacherous beard.

1. Xabi Alonso

Just an absolutely elite traitor. Would have absolutely everyone charmed and fooled from the first moment to last.

If you don’t believe us, this is a man who has now been manager of both Real Madrid and Chelsea and yet remains universally beloved for, in ascending order of importance, , handsome face, cracking beard.

The only downside is that his dominance would be so total throughout the show that there would be simply no peril. Again, though, nobody will really mind. Because of the passing, and the face, and the beard.

READ NEXT: Ranking the 10 worst Premier League caretaker managers ever: Lampard, Shearer, Rangnick…

TRY A QUIZ: Can you name every Premier League manager hired & sacked in the same season?