RIATH AL-SAMARRAI: Alarm bells are ringing at Chelsea but Graham Potter thrives under pressure

Graham Potter has never been a guy for liberal use of soundbites but he had a good one at Brighton. 

It was perhaps among the finest for what it is like for a manager trying to cure a club’s form in the midst of relentless fixtures and escalating pressures. 

‘Like fixing an airplane while it’s in the air,’ was how he put it. Never a prolific sharer of golden lines, Potter, but that was decent.

Chelsea have won once in eight games and sit 10th in the table under Graham Potter

Alarm bells are ringing at a club that have traditionally been trigger happy with managers 

It also feels increasingly relevant, with Chelsea having won once in eight and sitting 10th in the table. 

That’s two below the club he left and it’s the sort of alarm that has a habit of ringing loud at Stamford Bridge. 

Which is why you have to wonder about habits and ways: the habits and ways of a club that under Roman Abramovich tended to throw out pilots when they hit any sustained turbulence, and indeed acted up to character when Todd Boehly did the same to Thomas Tuchel. They speak many languages at Chelsea but excuses rarely seem to translate.

And that is a shame and a concern, if we go back to the habits and ways of the man in charge. All managers speak of projects, often because it sounds good and serves an interest up to a point – if you make it about results you will always be a hostage.

Except Potter has a demonstrable record of taking the long road to good places. His very career is a metaphor for his style – no free passes, no handouts, no trading on a the reputation of being a top player. 

Potter has a record of taking the long road to success during his time in football

Hard yards is a description made for a manager who uprooted his family to go to a Swedish outpost, which followed time in the muddier end of the grass roots on the university circuit.

I remember going to see him in Swansea to talk about his time at Ostersunds, and we know by now of the success that got his name out there. Fourth division to top flight, a win over Arsenal. 

That was all revisited when he went to Swansea and Brighton and then Chelsea, via speculation he is an England manager in waiting. But I remember that interview for the visceral images of his stories, about February training sessions when it got to minus 20. 

Problem with that, he explained, is the balls freeze at minus 18. ‘Like heading canon balls,’ he said. They had to change them every 20 minutes, which wasn’t an option for the players’ eyelashes – they kept snapping off.

The point is, he knows a challenge and he has always thrived. He knew a challenge at Swansea, where his best players were routinely sold off from under him (16 in the two windows prior to our chat, against five new signings, leaving one centre-half) and he rebuilt a relegated, shattered team to play stylish football, best shown when they led Manchester City 2-0 in an FA Cup quarter-final (Pep Guardiola gave him high praise on that and several others). 

He knew a challenge at Brighton, where they booed him 14 months ago for a goalless draw with Leeds. They finished that season in their highest ever top-flight position.

Potter loves a challenger and he has never left a club worse off than when he first joined

Folk at Brighton speak of a manager who never called out his players in public, even when some may have warranted it. A manager who doesn’t give much time to reading and listening to media criticisms, but knows when it is going on. 

A manager who hated adopting a more pragmatic style of football for seven or eight games after lockdown but found a way to make it work, and found a way back to the approach he preferred and thrived. It got him to Chelsea.

And now he is in the mud again. The results have a bit of stink about them, and most sensible observers will know there is only so much fighting one can do with so many injuries to key players. 

But it’s Chelsea and so have to worry for whoever is at the controls when the altitude is decreasing and the dials are wonky. At this point you would have to say Potter has only ever left a club in a far better state than he found it. 

The question is whether Stamford Bridge will ever be suited for such rational conversations.

Joe Marler got two weeks for telling Jake Heenan his mother is a ‘f***ing whore’. In the fallout, which has centred on whether the ban was too lenient or too harsh, he was right on one thing – he wasn’t the first to insult a mother on a sports field. He won’t be the last either. 

It was puerile, it was awful, and it landed the desired effect of unsettling an opponent, albeit for the unforeseen fact that Heenan’s mother is sick and in hospital.

From a distance, Marler has always struck me as an entertaining guy and he has also spoken well and bravely in the past about his mental health. But in this case, the instinct is to side with his wife – he was a moron and it wasn’t even funny.

Joe Marler was handed a two-week sanction for comments made towards Jake Heenan

Cristiano Ronaldo’s debut at Al Nassr was delayed because of his lingering ban for slapping a phone out of a fan’s hand when he was a Manchester United player. 

He’s earning £3million a week and yet he has the look and feel of a walking punchline these days.

Cristiano Ronaldo’s debut for Saudi side Al Nassr was delayed due to a two-match ban