IAN LADYMAN: Graham Potter’s sacking by Chelsea is dismally short-term and short-sighted
So it turns out that new Chelsea is just like old Chelsea. Win or bust. Move forwards or move to the next one.
The appointment of Graham Potter was supposed to signal the end of the Roman Abramovich years of hire and fire, both literally and in terms of the club’s philosophical outlook. It was, new owner Todd Boehly assured Potter on hiring him last summer, time to build a different and more sustainable football club.
But that meant nothing in the end. It meant nothing once a season of reverse travel became inevitable. It meant nothing once a shiny new toy from Germany became available. How inevitable. How dismally short-term and short-sighted.
Chelsea should not have to tolerate bad managers, of course, but Potter is not one even if he has been a disappointment in some ways. His results have been worse than anybody ever could have foreseen.
But then Potter has never been an impact manager. That is not on his CV. His first season at Brighton was a little slow, even he would admit that. But his CV does tell you that, given time, he is a coach who can have a profound impact on a group of players and on a football club.
Graham Potter was sacked by Chelsea as their loss to Aston Villa proved to be the final straw
![Todd Boehly's appointment of Potter was supposed to put an end to the Roman Abramovich years of hire and fire at Stamford Bridge as he assured the manager would have time](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/04/02/21/69397975-0-image-a-23_1680467392740.jpg)
Todd Boehly’s appointment of Potter was supposed to put an end to the Roman Abramovich years of hire and fire at Stamford Bridge as he assured the manager would have time
![Potter was forced to work with a bloated squad full of new players and totally lacking balance](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/04/02/21/69398721-11930989-image-a-36_1680468816742.jpg)
Potter was forced to work with a bloated squad full of new players and totally lacking balance
There were too few signs of those gifts at Chelsea. Some of his selections were unusual. Equally, Potter has been asked to work with a bloated squad full of new players and totally lacking balance.
Chelsea, for example, do not have a single reliable centre forward simply because Abramovich spent the final years of his ownership sanctioning the purchase of really bad or really unsuitable ones. And then Boehly arrived and bought a rogue one, too, in the shape of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
Of all the strange things Chelsea have done in these last few months, buying a centre forward like Aubameyang in August and then hiring a manager like Potter the very next month was perhaps the strangest. Maybe we should have known then that long-term, joined-up planning was something Boehly was capable of saying only to find implementing it a little harder.
With all this in mind, the stats behind what turned out to be Potter’s final game in charge of Chelsea were quite appropriate. The possession was at 70 per cent and that yielded 13 corners, 27 shots on goal and exactly no goals. The outcome was 0-2 home defeat to Aston Villa.
There are those who say Potter was not cut out for a big club. That he said the wrong things at the wrong time and in the wrong way. Strange how those things get thrown at managers when they lose but not when they win. It’s all rubbish, of course. What matters is what happens on the training pitch and then on match day and the great shame now is that we will never know whether the great change of direction – some real faith in a new way of just being – would have worked at Chelsea over time.
Chelsea’s attempts to reach the top four of the Premier League ended weeks ago. They are still in the Champions League at the quarter final stage and that’s a competition in which Potter’s Chelsea have performed reasonably well.
So the interesting thing for Chelsea and Boehly would have been to give Potter his time through the rest of the season, through a summer and a pre-season and in to the next campaign. In other words, to do what they said they would be. That would have been the brave thing to do.
But ultimately Boehly’s Chelsea has proved itself to be just like the one that came before and that feels a bit sad if also a bit inevitable. Potter will come again. He is a fine coach and man. It would be no surprise at all to see him at Leicester next season. That already feels like a good fit for both.
![Potter's sacking proves it's the same Chelsea as the one under former owner Abramovich](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/04/02/21/69397983-0-image-a-24_1680467431089.jpg)
Potter’s sacking proves it’s the same Chelsea as the one under former owner Abramovich
![Julian Nagelsmann is favourite to take the job after he was recently sacked by Bayern Munich](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/04/02/21/69397981-0-image-a-25_1680467462469.jpg)
Julian Nagelsmann is favourite to take the job after he was recently sacked by Bayern Munich
He will certainly choose his next club carefully. Speaking to this newspaper as Brighton manager at the start of the season, he allowed himself to talk hypothetically about what a move elsewhere would have to entail.
‘Staying alive is part of the consideration when you take a job,’ he said.
‘You ask: ‘What are the chances of being myself here? Do they understand how I have got to this point?’
‘Because there is no point going somewhere and them expecting something completely different to what you have always been.’
With that in mind, Chelsea and Graham Potter always seemed like a strange partnership. He hasn’t changed and neither, it transpires, have they. It’s the same Chelsea, just in different clothes.
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