Chelsea Sack Graham Potter

[Ham]

26 minutes ago, thevelourfog said:

I really hope not, and really hope the club have already been setting up his successor for the summer (realistically when anyone worth wanting would consider taking us over in our current state). I hope yesterday means at most we don't need an emergency interim replacement but he has already done enough that the owners should have a hard expiration date on his time here.

Surely the club is in an excellent state. Just badly coached.

[Max Fowler]

19 hours ago, Proud-Blue said:

Might have bought himself a bit of time after today. If we can knock out Dortmund I suspect he's likely to get until the end of the season, providing we aren't dragged into a relegation battle.

Boehly’s smile said it all. I’m pretty confident we get beat by Dortmund and the pressure starts mounting again. If we win, I’m tempted to agree with you.

[thevelourfog]

5 hours ago, Ham said:

Surely the club is in an excellent state. Just badly coached.

Is it? I honestly just meant our league position and a new coach being likely to preferring to not be associated with it or take on its reputational risk but I think it's too much to say the club itself is in an excellent state. If Potter goes, loads of football operation staff will go with him (well beyond the usual backroom coaching staff). The player recruitment staff and model is new and unproven either way yet imo, the medical staffing seems a bit questionable and we've got a fair bit of work to do commercially. That's all beyond a bloated playing staff with two different wage structures in place.

I think there's a lot good to work with and a lot a top coach would look at and think "I can succeed here". I just think excellent is an overstatement, lots of work to do.

[Mark Kelly]

I think if Potter goes them only him and Billy Reid will go the backroom boys will stay, they don't need Potter to do tbeir work and it's the way most clubs appear to be set up these days. @thevelourfog

[Bob Singleton]

1 hour ago, Mark Kelly said:

I think if Potter goes them only him and Billy Reid will go the backroom boys will stay, they don't need Potter to do tbeir work and it's the way most clubs appear to be set up these days. @thevelourfog

Agreed... but I'd add Bjorn Hamberg, Ben Roberts and Saltor Graug to that list. Essentially his "personal" back room guys he brought over from Brighton. The other new appointments - the data analysts and senior recruitment guys from Leipzig, Southampton and elsewhere - will stay. The only question mark could be Kyle McCaulay. He's ex-Brighton but I feel he would probably stay.

 

[Michael Tucker]

4 hours ago, Mark Kelly said:

I think if Potter goes them only him and Billy Reid will go the backroom boys will stay, they don't need Potter to do tbeir work and it's the way most clubs appear to be set up these days. @thevelourfog

I'm starting to believe that Potter isn't going anywhere. A shame, but there it is. Not sure what his attraction to TB is, but I think that it exists.

[kev61]

5 minutes ago, Michael Tucker said:

I'm starting to believe that Potter isn't going anywhere. A shame, but there it is. Not sure what his attraction to TB is, but I think that it exists.

Where did Boehly and co get the idea that Potter was worthy of taking the reins of a massive club like Chelsea?.

 

[chara]

6 minutes ago, kev61 said:

Where did Boehly and co get the idea that Potter was worthy of taking the reins of a massive club like Chelsea?.

 

The media flavour of the season..English, young for a coach..misrepresented Brighton statistics .... Howe/Potter the new Southgates of English football. What could go wrong?

That's why we trust the media!

[Guest mrsm81]

Tbh I thought it was a positive move to employ potter. I thought we were going places. Even with painful period.

 

 

I now live in Brighton and he's respected here. Seeing what de zerbi has done I'm now far less sure. I thought he'd bring a coherent style and one that was on the front foot. I hate seeing us clinging on at home to Leeds,  when really we should've brushed them aside 

 

[Max Fowler]

Really good presser from Potter today I thought. A great performance and win against Dortmund and I might be back onside!!! 
https://youtu.be/mHfP6OtAzgo

 

[chara]

1 hour ago, Max Fowler said:

Really good presser from Potter today I thought. A great performance and win against Dortmund and I might be back onside!!! 
https://youtu.be/mHfP6OtAzgo

 

Not seen it but.... 

"It's only words...and words are all I have.........."

[Ham]

1 hour ago, Max Fowler said:

Really good presser from Potter today I thought. A great performance and win against Dortmund and I might be back onside!!! 
https://youtu.be/mHfP6OtAzgo

 

Mods..... Max's account has been hacked. 

[RDCW]

2 hours ago, Max Fowler said:

Really good presser from Potter today I thought. A great performance and win against Dortmund and I might be back onside!!! 
https://youtu.be/mHfP6OtAzgo

 

Not sure that vanilla performance merits any accolades to be honest. Equally it does not deserve any particular criticisms. Nothing changes for me.

[Bison]

If you don't laugh you'll cry.

[Sleeping Dave]

Don’t think Boehly & Co wants to sack Potter. They’d lose face and be widely ridiculed. Don’t think it’s likely and it’ll have to get really ugly before they’ll do that. Not saying I agree, rather what I think they’ll do (or more not do in this case). 

If Potter was to be relieved of his duties I have no idea who should replace him. There’s a few names that I believe we could be looking at - Enrique, Zidane, Simeone, Nagelsmann… Maybe De Zerbi. But I don’t think there is an outstanding candidate to take over. So yeah, not really sure where this is going to be perfectly honest. 

[chara]

27 minutes ago, Bison said:

If you don't laugh you'll cry.

Easy to make a case with 20/20 hindsight but basically what GP was doing at Brighton was running a solid midtable side doing what solid mid table sides do,,,keep in the EPL.pick off the lowhanging fruit, nicking the odd points off "better" sides with no pretensions or ambitions for the top spots,

That doesn't work at Chelsea or the real top sides...makes me wonder how GP became flavour of the season.

I mentioned a while back that on a "day out jolly" at Brands Hatch I competently drove a Ford Escort around the course,,then a Formula 3...scared the living crap out of me,,we all have ceilings!..GP and the Peter Principle?

[Sleeping Dave]

Me, and probably a bunch of others, knew we’d have problems scoring goals this season. That much was obvious with or without Tuchel. 

However… 24 goals in 25 PL games. When was the last time we finished a season with less that 1 goal scored per game? I certainly can’t recall that happening in my 30 odd years punishing myself supporting this club. 

Liverpool, who are having an average season by all accounts have scored 47. 

[Thiago97]

1 hour ago, Sleeping Dave said:

Me, and probably a bunch of others, knew we’d have problems scoring goals this season. That much was obvious with or without Tuchel. 

However… 24 goals in 25 PL games. When was the last time we finished a season with less that 1 goal scored per game? I certainly can’t recall that happening in my 30 odd years punishing myself supporting this club. 

Liverpool, who are having an average season by all accounts have scored 47. 

Whilst we have a number of issues to overcome, this here really is the crux of a lot of things. Personally, I don't think this is neccessarily solved by just having a top striker. I've mentioned this so often this season, that I realise I sound like a stuck record. As a collective, our decision making in key attacking areas is absolutely woeful. It was bad under Tuchel and it has become progressively worse under Potter. Tuchel was frequently losing his head at our lack of ability to put teams away and quite often, it was not as simple as missing easy chances. It has been terrible decision making which can often lead to the effort on goal not actually happening.

The whole situation would look a lot better if every forward player had another 2-3 goals each. I realise this is very simplistic measure, but we are not talking huge swings in margin here, we are talking Mount, Sterling, Havertz, Aubamayang, Pulisic all contributing another small number of goals to what they have.

We would still have problems and the season would still be somewhat disappointing, but it would also look much more healthier than it does right now. Another 12 odd goals from these players is worth anywhere between 9-12 pts in my opinion. It allows us to turn 0-0 into 1-0 or 2-0 in some cases and actually have some control of the match.

[xceleryx]

19 minutes ago, Thiago97 said:

Whilst we have a number of issues to overcome, this here really is the crux of a lot of things. Personally, I don't think this is neccessarily solved by just having a top striker. I've mentioned this so often this season, that I realise I sound like a stuck record. As a collective, our decision making in key attacking areas is absolutely woeful. It was bad under Tuchel and it has become progressively worse under Potter. Tuchel was frequently losing his head at our lack of ability to put teams away and quite often, it was not as simple as missing easy chances. It has been terrible decision making which can often lead to the effort on goal not actually happening.

The whole situation would look a lot better if every forward player had another 2-3 goals each. I realise this is very simplistic measure, but we are not talking huge swings in margin here, we are talking Mount, Sterling, Havertz, Aubamayang, Pulisic all contributing another small number of goals to what they have.

We would still have problems and the season would still be somewhat disappointing, but it would also look much more healthier than it does right now. Another 12 odd goals from these players is worth anywhere between 9-12 pts in my opinion. It allows us to turn 0-0 into 1-0 or 2-0 in some cases and actually have some control of the match.

Wholeheartedly agree. 

The issue for years has been personnel - be it technical qualities letting them down, their football IQ, creativity, vision, decision making, and so on. We've also been one dimensional within our options, with a lot of players having skill or deficiency crossovers that mean even when we rotate players in and out we still had the same problems.

Then we've had the midfield shortcomings compound this further because we've been unable to rely on them to chip in here and there on top, outside of basically Jorginho taking penalties. Kante has 13 goals and 15 assists in 263 appearances, Kovacic 5 goals and 14 assists in 207 appearances, with Jorginho having 29 goals and 9 assists in 213 appearances. Those three have been our engine room for the past 5-6 years now. Just got good enough overall, especially from Kante and Kovacic given how much time they've spent higher up the pitch for us. 

We've sort of made steps to remedy this but we've gone with young developing players that are likely still going to need a bit of time. 

Getting in a proper striker will help to a degree but the big change will be had by having a cohesive group that possess high quality fundamentals and better decision making skills. We're not there yet, which is further hindered by having a manager that's historically struggled to get his side scoring. 

[ROTG]

6 minutes ago, xceleryx said:

Getting in a proper striker will help to a degree

We have a proper striker who need to be brought back into the fold next season. Like him or loath him he will score goals especially against the fodder teams, which is where the club has been sold short for the past couple seasons.

[xceleryx]

1 minute ago, ROTG said:

We have a proper striker who need to be brought back into the fold next season. Like him or loath him he will score goals especially against the fodder teams, which is where the club has been sold short for the past couple seasons.

Unlike some I've got no real lingering issue with Lukaku. I don't think he was utilised correctly at all under Tuchel outside of the first  few games he played here, and had no favours from his teammates and their inability to spot or reward runs - this applies to others also. 

If he was to return his fitness is the biggest question mark. Should he manage to get back into better shape and also stay injury free then he'll score goals, just as he's pretty much always done across his career. 

[Sleeping Dave]

At this point, bringing back Lukaku and buying back Abraham seems like no brainier decisions. 

None of the “strikers” we have is remotely close to be good enough. Lukaku and Abraham would be instant upgrades. That’s how bad the situation is. 

[martin1905]

2 hours ago, Sleeping Dave said:

Me, and probably a bunch of others, knew we’d have problems scoring goals this season. That much was obvious with or without Tuchel. 

However… 24 goals in 25 PL games. When was the last time we finished a season with less that 1 goal scored per game? I certainly can’t recall that happening in my 30 odd years punishing myself supporting this club. 

Liverpool, who are having an average season by all accounts have scored 47. 

Nice to see you back Dave.

It's probably never happened to us but it's quite common with teams managed by Potter. He's now managed 138 games in the premier League and his teams have scored a combined 147 goals. That's a  big sample right there and  pretty damning to be honest.

 

[martin1905]

6 minutes ago, xceleryx said:

Unlike some I've got no real lingering issue with Lukaku. I don't think he was utilised correctly at all under Tuchel outside of the first  few games he played here, and had no favours from his teammates and their inability to spot or reward runs - this applies to others also. 

If he was to return his fitness is the biggest question mark. Should he manage to get back into better shape and also stay injury free then he'll score goals, just as he's pretty much always done across his career. 

Has he not been awful at Inter?

I haven't seen any of him, just what I've read.

[xceleryx]

Just now, Sleeping Dave said:

At this point, bringing back Lukaku and buying back Abraham seems like no brainier decisions. 

None of the “strikers” we have is remotely close to be good enough. Lukaku and Abraham would be instant upgrades. That’s how bad the situation is. 

If we willingly spend bulk money to bring Abraham back we deserve to never score a goal again.