The magic is gone - Potter and Chelsea just KILLED the 'project manager'

Paul Macdonald

2 Apr 2023 20:46 BST
4 min read

Graham Potter, Chelsea, 2022/23 — © ProShots

Graham Potter’s time at Chelsea was short, and he is the latest victim of a dying trend - the ‘project’ manager.

Potter was installed by new Chelsea owner Todd Boehly, who was impressed enough to attempt to bring half of Brighton with him - mainly backroom staff - to build out a structure that would operate across the entire club.

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A figurehead that the football operations were built in the image of, that could provide interconnectivity between the team on the pitch, the transfer policy, the style of play of the youth teams, and everything else in between. But he lasted just six months.

Club statement.
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) April 2, 2023

It’s a noble commitment but these days, with the cut-throat nature of the Premier League and the financial ramifications of relegation, the project manager belongs only to the very elite level, and some might say only one man fits the bill - Pep Guardiola.

Whenever Guardiola is in charge at a club, it’s clear that the relationship will end when he decides, not the other way around. And these days, that is a pretty unique situation to find yourself in. When City have been in crisis or facing a roadblock in some way, there’s confidence from everyone that he will be able to turn it around, and that there would be no-one better to do it.

But no-one else - not even Jurgen Klopp any more - exudes that same confidence and is likely to be afforded the oft-mentioned ‘time’ to get it right. No, the idea of a club building its future around a single man is appearing to be growingly obsolete.

There are people and clubs which just fit in terms of philosophies; Roberto De Zerbi at Brighton, Thomas Frank at Brentford, to name a few. But the structure behind those two men is built in such a way that even if they were to be sacked or moved on, the club could continue forward. Hell, it already happened at Brighton when Potter decided to move to Stamford Bridge. And it will happen again after De Zerbi leaves. That’s just how smart clubs operate.

But for the rest, their positioning is now simply too kneejerk. In Chelsea’s case, they spent a fortune on transfers last summer, only to remove Thomas Tuchel from the job two weeks into the season. We were promised that, under Potter, that type of snap reaction wouldn’t happen again, and that this was foundations being built for the future.

But it’s all bollocks, as usual. This is a team that have spent over €500m on players, and some of them quite clearly are not of the type that Potter enjoys. So he’s been handed them, rather than recruited them, and in that respect he has to have sympathy. A dream job, undermined by figures off the pitch who, at the moment, don’t really look as if they have any idea whatsoever what they are doing.

Potter goes on the same day as Brendan Rodgers at Leicester - another manager whose draw was that a structure could be built around him. Frank Lampard at Everton, Patrick Vieira at Crystal Palace, Jesse Marsch at Leeds, these are supposed to be top-down examples of progressive appointments, but when the shit hits the fan, and the abyss of either relegation or, in Chelsea’s case, no Champions League appears more likely than likely, the nuclear button is pressed and all of that thinking goes out of the window.

And that’s the problem. Every point, win, position, there’s too much at stake now in the richest league in the world. The value of the asset hinges on each and every bounce of the ball and the ‘relegation is unthinkable’ line is posted once again as the spectre which haunts every team in the dogfight.

So Potter is just another example of a club who seem like they want to do things the right way, and have ambitions to do so - until reality hits. And in Potter’s case, that took just six months to hit home.

It’s impossible to predict or even understand where Chelsea go from here - with so much on the line.