Graham Potter on the transfer decision which made his job impossible | OneFootball

Graham Potter’s NDA following his departure from Chelsea has clearly expired, as he’s doing the rounds now looking for a new job and talking openly about his ill fated spell at Stamford Bridge.

On the High Performance Podcast today he talked about the difficulties of managing a squad with a lot of new players – and then a few months in, getting several more added to the mess:

“If you change 20, 30 players in 2 or 3 windows. The instability of that is hard to deal with,” Potter explained.

“My job as a coach was to improve what we got as it was, we took a different decision, which is another 7 players, and then you’re like, Okay, we’ve got to start again here.”

Graham Potter gesticulates on the touchline.

Potter’s impossible situation took a year to resolve

We said it at the time, it was an impossible job for anyone to have to deal with. After that January, even the owners seemed to recognise that, and their appointment of an interim coach to soak up the remaining damage of that painful period rather than immediately getting a new man in to get tainted by association showed that they realised that there was no real solution other than making it to the end of the season, where a whole slew of unhappy faces could be shipped out of the dressing room and work could begin on integrated the new players.

Even then, it felt like it took another 6 months of Mauricio Pochettino’s time in charge before the final after effects of so much change and turnover had faded away, and the new players had had enough time at the club to start really gelling and contributing relative to their talent.

He didn’t get everything right, and maybe some coaches could have done better, but we always said it was a nightmare scenario for a coach.