What now, Graham Potter?
https://theathletic.com/5332242/2024/03/16/graham-potter-Chelsea-man-utd/
When Premier League managers get sacked, they tend to stay quiet for a while before entering a TV studio or appearing on a podcast, as if to remind us all they still exist.
Frequently in these situations, they note how being dismissed will make them a better manager in the long run, while veering away from throwing shade at the players who contributed to their downfall or the higher-ups who wielded the axe.
It is a path followed by most in the business at some stage, including Jose Mourinho, Mauricio Pochettino and, more recently, Jesse Marsch.
You could argue their motive is to put themselves back into the shop window for owners and chairmen getting itchy feet about their club’s current manager or head coach.
Graham Potter, however, opted for a different route after his Chelsea dismissal on April 2 last year.
Instead of talking tactics with Jamie Carragher under the bright lights in Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football studio, he pretty much vanished; and as we approach a year since his departure, he has still rarely been seen. Media interview requests have been rejected, holidays taken and possible new jobs turned down.
There was also a trip to the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic at the end of February to deliver a keynote speech to the British Armed Forces based there. Andrew Murrison MP, the parliamentary under-secretary of state at the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MOD), had to clarify that Potter had not been hired for the visit by the MOD after being asked the question by opposition MP Rosena Allin-Khan.
While in the Falklands, which is an internally self-governing overseas territory of the United Kingdom but located around 300 miles (500km) off the coast of Argentina, Potter also visited youth side Falklands Football Club and spoke at Stanley College in the capital, also named Stanley, before participating in an off-the-record Q+A where no questions were off limits.
“It came about at really short notice,” explains Michael Poole, a coach for Falklands FC. “One of our colleagues at the club had heard an advert on the British Forces Broadcasting Service radio station that Graham was coming over to give a talk about leadership and dealing with difficult situations.
“The football club asked if there was any chance he could come and meet with people who love and enjoy football in Stanley and he was more than happy to.
“Some of us adults were even more excited than some of the kids! He was fantastic. He was really friendly and incredibly patient with us all. He spent a couple of hours outside on the all-weather football pitch and spoke to the kids at the start before speaking to the senior players.”
“The guys found his talk really interesting,” added Mike Summers OBE, chair of the islands’ National Sports Council. “It is not something we are generally exposed to or able to participate in.
“We rather wished we had a bit more time and notice, as we could have arranged a game for him to coach the Stanley team. He did a crossbar challenge with senior members of the Stanley squad and went in goal for the junior players when they took penalties.”
The one thing Potter didn’t do was give away the next move in his career.
And as Chelsea continue to struggle in the post-Roman Abramovich era, you wonder whether some club owners will look back at his troubled, seven-month spell at Stamford Bridge and look at it in a slightly kinder light.
After his achievements in Sweden and with previous club Brighton, are we coming close to seeing the return of Potter at last?
Potter was brought to Chelsea in September 2022 after their new owners decided to sack Thomas Tuchel six games into the new Premier League season and implement a ‘long-term’ strategy they hoped would return a club that had won five league titles, two Champions Leagues and six FA Cups this century to the top of the game.
Impressed by what he had achieved in three seasons at Brighton, Potter was the one co-owners Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali wanted to take Chelsea into a new era, coinciding with their significant splash in the transfer market, spending £550million in their first summer.
Less than seven months into that new era, however, and despite having paid Brighton £21million to hire Potter and several members of his coaching and backroom staff, he was sacked after losing 11 and drawing eight of his 31 matches in charge, leaving the west London club 11th in the Premier League and 12 points outside the top four spots that bring Champions League qualification.
In a joint statement, Boehly and Eghbali said they had the “highest degree” of respect for Potter and that they were “disappointed” they needed to make another change in the dugout.
It would have been easy for Potter to throw mud at Chelsea; after all, to many, they had become the definition of how not to run a football club and there is a strong case to be made that he was a victim of the ownership’s blase approach to just about everything, as opposed to his coaching not being at an adequate level.
Sometimes silence can speak for itself and Potter has largely remained off the grid since his dismissal.
Given how Pochettino has struggled this season in his first year as Chelsea coach, the now 48-year-old Englishman must have a sense of vindication that he was not the problem and that it may have more to do with the frantic way the club has conducted its business.
Following his dismissal, several other managerial jobs have become available, most notably elsewhere in the Premier League at Tottenham Hotspur, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Crystal Palace, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest, and his name is often linked to vacancies.
When Janne Andersson, manager of the Sweden men’s national team, stepped down in November after they failed to qualify for the 2024 European Championship, the country’s FA attempted to appoint Potter. He is known in Sweden having managed Ostersund between 2011 and 2018, leading them from the fourth tier into the top division and winning its FA Cup equivalent. They also got to the knockout phase of the Europa League, beating Arsenal at the Emirates Stadium along the way.
“You can say this, the list of names that have been sent to me or that I am reading, it is clear that he (Potter) is part of that list,” Andrea Mollerberg, the Swedish FA’s general secretary, said. “We’ll see what we filter down and who is interested in this role.”
In late December, Potter and his wife, Rachel, bought a villa in Are, a Swedish ski resort, with the estate agent involved, Joakim Wiklund, telling the local press he had been working on the transaction since last March and that his customers asked him to “keep a very low profile”.
Having passed on the opportunity to return to management with Sweden, the expectation within the industry is that Potter will take a role somewhere this summer — should the right one become available.
“There is no doubting he is a good manager and good with people and players,” said a source who has come up against Potter in the Premier League, speaking anonymously to protect relationships. “He is ideal for building a long-term programme.
“His time at Chelsea raises question marks as to whether his personality is strong enough for a big job and what that entails, but that doesn’t make him a bad coach. He definitely isn’t that!”
Potter is already the bookies’ favourite to be the next Manchester United manager should their new minority shareholder INEOS — the petrochemicals firm founded by British billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe — decide to sack Erik ten Hag.
United’s incoming sporting director, Dan Ashworth, has been placed on gardening leave by current employers Newcastle United as the two Premier League clubs negotiate a compensation package. Ashworth knows Potter well and the pair have a close relationship, heightened from their successful time as colleagues at Brighton from 2019 to 2022.
According to Poole, Potter’s trip to the Falkland Islands stemmed from a conversation he’d had over the festive period about wanting to visit the archipelago — the subject of a brief war between the UK and Argentina in 1982 over sovereignty.
“He was over for four days,” Poole said. “He spent one afternoon with us in Stanley and the rest of the time he was with the military and he mentioned flying around the islands to some of the more remote places where the military are based, to say hello.
“He was keen to see some penguins and that was being organised for him.”
Although his time at the football club was, for those present, a roaring success, it was not until he delivered a speech followed by a Q+A session at Stanley College that they saw him open up about his career.
“There were two elements to the Q+A,” Poole says. “One was the open bit up at the football pitch, which was more about the best players he’s coached and that kind of thing and also talking about his career as a coach.
“After his short talk on leadership, he did another Q+A and this was off-the-record, but he was incredibly candid about his career and why he had moved roles.
“He was there to talk about leadership generally and was trying to get across some key messages. All we wanted to talk about after was his time at Chelsea and individual players, but he was happy to answer those and was a lot more open than I thought he would be.”
Potter was said to be relaxed and took each question in his stride, noting the differences between Brighton and Chelsea and why he was unable to make his mark at the latter.
Although Potter’s trip to the Falklands had nothing to do with lining himself up for a new job, it has served as a reminder that he remains available for employment.
This summer will see managerial vacancies at Liverpool (taking over when Jurgen Klopp steps down), Bayern Munich (replacing Tuchel) and Barcelona (where Xavi is also quitting), as well as potentially Manchester United. Going back two years, you could argue Potter would have been a strong candidate for such Premier League vacancies.
But those seven months at Chelsea left questions about his suitability for a club of that stature and they will remain unanswered until he talks publicly about his experience at Stamford Bridge or proves his doubters wrong in his next job.
If he is still clubless in the summer, Potter will have been out of work for more than a year.
It is already his longest spell without a job since his managerial career began in the depths of non-League in 2008 and he surely won’t want his unemployment to extend into the 2024-25 season, as there is a danger yesterday’s man becomes the forgotten man.
