Potter reveals what went wrong at Chelsea: We walked into the washing machine

Robin Bairner

• 30 Sept 2024 23:08 BST
• 3 min read

Former Chelsea manager Graham Potter has reflected on what went wrong during his stint at Stamford Bridge.

Potter took charge of the Blues in September 2022 when he took the reins of the club from Thomas Tuchel, yet the former Brighton boss experienced a turbulent time.

In 31 matches, he recorded only 12 victories and was sacked by Todd Boehly before the end of the season to be replaced by caretaker boss Frank Lampard.

Appearing on Sky Sports’ ‘Monday Night Football’, he was questioned by Jamie Carragher over what he learned from the experience and if he simply did not have enough time on the training pitch to work with the players due to the volume of fixtures.

“Yeah, certainly when you experience that, it’s a fair point, especially when you’re the big club. The onus is on you to win the game. You’re not playing the same guerilla warfare as you can do at Brighton. There’s a challenge there,” Potter said.

“Time and preparation. It doesn’t just happen. You can’t just say: ‘Here we go.’”

Potter reveals what he underestimated

Potter says he wish he had a pre-season to work with the players on certain tactical principals that he felt his team lacked.

“What I underestimated I suppose is that time of reflection prior to the pre-season, that six weeks of work that you can do to get a lot of principles in, you can get a lot of coaching in, so that when the games come, you can be more able to change if you need to,” he said.

“What happened to us was that we almost walked into the washing machine, and you’ve got nothing there. Then it becomes more difficult.

“We’ve always tried to work to the strengths of the players, look at the attributes they’ve got. If you’ve got an injury, do we look for a like-for-like replacement or do we look at something within our group that can play to their strengths rather than just replace a Reece James or a Wesley Fofana.

“But at the same time, there’s lots of dynamics that go along with that that are not so easy to get across and that was certainly one of the challenges we found in that period.”

Potter has not taken a job since leaving the Blues around 18 months ago, but has been linked with several top posts, with Manchester United especially interested in him.