Graham Potter | turns down Ajax job

Gabriel Djemba-Bebe

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When Potter says things like "anything that can go wrong - is going wrong" reminds me of some of the quotes Moyes came out with at United. If you're constantly blaming 'bad luck' for your results then it ultimately wears very thin on a fanbase who are used to success.
 

Mr Pigeon

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Potter gets paid 50 million if he gets fired, he ain't going nowhere.
This makes me kind of happy. The money will be somewhat comforting to him (think how many Kenwood juicers you could buy with that cash) whilst at the same time ruining Chelsea's finances to the point where the FA and UEFA might even lift their heads for once and notice that Chelsea are crooked as feck. Just for a second, mind, before they're protected again.
 

bringbackbebe

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He lost this match at the pre match press conference. Extremely defensive and defeatist. Reminds me of Moyes, and Ole towards the end of his tenure.
 

AlPistacho

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Been seeing lots of tweets on Twitter comparing Potter getting the Chelsea job to being as ludicrous as Ole being at United.

If Potter is named Poutinho no one says he didn’t deserve a crack at a top club. No different to Nuno Santo getting a chance at Spurs. I’d actually say Potter is the first English/British manager who earned his job at a top 6 club. It looks like it’s not going to work out no shame.
 
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Abraxas

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The saving grace for Potter is they're out of domestic cups and they're that bad and that reliant on other clubs failing to an improbable degree in the league that there's probably more value in backing the chance that he can learn on the fly this season. He needs to start talking like a manager of Chelsea though.
 

AlPistacho

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The saving grace for Potter is they're out of domestic cups and they're that bad and that reliant on other clubs failing to an improbable degree in the league that there's probably more value in backing the chance that he can learn on the fly this season. He needs to start talking like a manager of Chelsea though.
I think he’s had a chance. A chance that he deserved. But he’s not built for it. Like many have said, it’s mostly about the way he talks. That’s the most important aspect in management, above the tactics, that’s what the players see and judge. What they buy into and are supposed to follow.
 

NoPace

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Sacking him at this point is idiotic. Top 4 is gone and I can't see them winning the CL. At this moment even top 6 seems a reach. Let Potter do his job and see if things improve.

Also, I feel Boehly is just spending for the sake of it now. This is worse version of Woodward.
Yeah, unless you hire someone to get immediate results like an Ancelotti type, you have to give a guy whose tactics are his selling point a pre-season.

As for Boehly, Aubameyang was just throwing away money for the slim chance at CL football, but the other signings have been younger or loans so seems fine to me, if a bit scattershot.
 

NoPace

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Kinda shame how this turned out to be.

Basically the new David Moyes. Proven to be out of his depth at clubs of such statue. Brighton is his level
I think this is harsh. Moyes never beat the top teams but Potter got it done at times. If he gets sacked at Chelsea and I was a big team on the continent I'd be seriously interested.

If they give him the pre-season, I think they'll be 5th or 6th next year and show real signs of progression.
 

roonster09

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I think this is harsh. Moyes never beat the top teams but Potter got it done at times. If he gets sacked at Chelsea and I was a big team on the continent I'd be seriously interested.

If they give him the pre-season, I think they'll be 5th or 6th next year and show real signs of progression.
Moyes beat plenty of big teams, it's just that he didn't do it away from home.
 

hobbers

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It's amazing how haggered he looks already. Very much in the Moyes and Ole trend of aging 10 years in 1 season.
 

RedCurry

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Potter was a great coach at Brighton to a point that if we hadn’t gotten ETH, I would have wanted him at United above Poch or any other candidate. The comparisons with Moyes don’t make sense in terms of footballing styles. But the job being too big for him feels very much like Moyes’ time with us. In my opinion, the points dropped early in the season was his own doing with his constant tinkering of the lineup to try and find his “best” team. He’s bit of a lame duck now and needs his players to bail him out. Modern day footballers won’t be bothered though.
 

roonster09

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Oh, well let's pretend I said that?
Maybe we can. Also Moyes did very well at Everton on limited budget but difference between him and Potter is/was playing style. Potter team try to dominate and keeps possession well whereas Moyes team are defensive first.
 

kaku06

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Not really? If you come into a club that isn't doing well, spending loads of money on crap and has loads of injuries it's not really an excuse but a valid assessment of where the club is at. Yes, he should be doing better but there are reasons for it not clicking and it taking more time than expected for it to.
I didn’t hear those excuses for the United managers and Chelsea are far better run than we are.
 

reelworld

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Potter was a great coach at Brighton to a point that if we hadn’t gotten ETH, I would have wanted him at United above Poch or any other candidate. The comparisons with Moyes don’t make sense in terms of footballing styles. But the job being too big for him feels very much like Moyes’ time with us. In my opinion, the points dropped early in the season was his own doing with his constant tinkering of the lineup to try and find his “best” team. He’s bit of a lame duck now and needs his players to bail him out. Modern day footballers won’t be bothered though.
Yeah, but he kinda have to do that since he got the job without pre season and without a transfer window. He had to find out which players works for his tactics which one are not.
Boehly spending like a drunk sailor doesn't help a bit
 

RedCurry

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Yeah, but he kinda have to do that since he got the job without pre season and without a transfer window. He had to find out which players works for his tactics which one are not.
Boehly spending like a drunk sailor doesn't help a bit
All fair points.
 

K2K

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"Can Manchester United score? They always score"
I've always maintained that not all the issues might be caused by him, but I don't think he's the right man to turn it around either.

I do think a different manager can get this group of players playing much better. You can tell that the players don't have much belief in him, and in football that's crucial.

People talk about giving him time, but at the rate they are young, the will finish in the bottom half of the table. Even with their issues, that's just too much. They have more quality than at least more than 50 percent of the teams in the league.
 

tenpoless

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Problem was clear since the beginning. Its Boehly, during his first day at school he thought he knew more than a CL winning manager. Potter is a victim. Is he even allowed to mold his own squad?
 

Redfrog

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I think this is harsh. Moyes never beat the top teams but Potter got it done at times. If he gets sacked at Chelsea and I was a big team on the continent I'd be seriously interested.

If they give him the pre-season, I think they'll be 5th or 6th next year and show real signs of progression.
Then you’ll be hopeless. No big team will approach him because they are usually competent.
 
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Not even close. Ralf is a snake oil salesman.
feck me @Pronewbie, Ralf came 3rd in the Bundesliga in 2019, a better achievement in a top league than Potter has ever managed :lol:
He’s also doing a good job for Austria now.

What he isn’t, is a good manager to parachute in mid-season as a caretaker, and well, Potter is proving even fecking worse at that, yet he at least has the bonus of being a permanent manager when trying to gain respect of the players and implement his style.
Ralf lost 8 games for us in total, Potter’s already on 7 losses :eek:.
As of now, there’s absolutely no debate as to who’s doing way fecking worse.
 
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10 points off top 4 and they still have to play all of the following sides away from home.

Spurs
United
City
Arsenal
Liverpool

Safe to say they are absolutely fecked and could finish in the bottom half if they don’t pull a Roman and bring in a new manager now to get them going.
 

Wednesday at Stoke

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All the football hipsters like Tifo are saying that Chelsea is the wrong club for him and he should have succeeded Klopp at Liverpool.
 

UnitedSofa

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He hasn’t won anything. The players won much more then him. Probably that’s the issue here.
No, don’t think so to be honest. Greatest decorated manager of all time in SAF didn’t win as much as the players. So it can be done. You just have to demand respect & be good. There’s players in the United dressing room who have won more than EtH and they respect him
 

Lyng

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This feels so eerily similar to Moyes at United.
While I do think Potter is a more talented manager this was to big a step to soon.
 

crossy1686

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We lost 3 out of our first 6 league games. 5 in our first 15 league games. He was given the benefit of the doubt until at least February, as I recall.

I get it, people don't rate Potter, and that's fine, but we don't need to start pretending like it's a new phenomenon for a British manager to have excuses made for them when they have a bad start in a job.
I rate Potter but he isn’t ready for this job and he never should have taken it. He needs 3 years at a team like Spurs first so he can learn the ropes and even then there’s no guarantee he’d be ready for the step up, he’s not ruthless enough like top managers are.
 
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Desert Eagle

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He hasn’t won anything. The players won much more then him. Probably that’s the issue here.
Good point. It's hard to demand respect from a dressing room like Chelseas where they've recently won the big trophies, especially when a lot of them probably didn't want Tuchel gone. It'll also be hard to shake the feeling that they have downgraded at the manager postion.
 

bringbackbebe

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Seemed to have been doing relatively same as compared to Tuchel last year on similar fixtures, but the last 5 games have turned the table for him. You can't attribute this entirely to the players - some of these are games they should be winning.
 

Dancfc

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It’s an even harder job at United and ETH is making it look rather easy - thank God we got him before Chelsea sacked Tuchel or else he might have gone there and we might have ended up with Potter.
I mean, he's doing well now but lets remember how things were looking at the start when Casemiro and Varane weren't on the pitch. Now imagine you have Eriksen, Rashford, Martinez, Shaw, Martial and DDG sidelined on top of that and you're having to start Maguire, Elanga, Dubravka and McFred every week.

That's pretty much the equivalent of our current injury issues.
 

crossy1686

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I mean, he's doing well now but lets remember how things were looking at the start when Casemiro and Varane weren't on the pitch. Now imagine you have Eriksen, Rashford, Martinez, Shaw, Martial and DDG sidelined on top of that and you're having to start Maguire, Elanga, Dubravka and McFred every week.

That's pretty much the equivalent of our current injury issues.
Yeah but then imagine we also spent £250m on replacements and didn't have to play McTomminay and Maguire
 

jadajos

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Chelsea are obvioulsy a mess right now not least thanks to cowboy Boehly. I don't follow Chelsea that closely and reading through this thread, at first I found myself nodding in agreement with all those writing off Potter completely now. But then I looked at their match history and thought maybe someone could play devils advocate here.

If you look at the match history, Potter was undefeated for the first 9 games with Chelsea. Off the 7 losses in the 10 recent games 5 of those came against the current top 3 and most in form teams in the league. Three of the losses directly vs. City. Taking over such a mess of a club and losing those games in succession to City is not a big shame. So that brings it down to 4 losses in 10. Arsenal at home probably stings, but they only lost one match the whole season and are on fire.

Newcastle you might argue do not have a better team on paper and a good coach should get a result there, but it was away from home and after losses vs. Arsenal and City when morale was already worsening. So you if you add all this context it doesn't look as terrible. Should the team put up more of a fight? Sure. But the only really bad results in his first 19 games were losses to Brighton and now Fulham, both away from home which can happen to top teams in the EPL. Even ETH who is undoubtably doing amazing work so far at United had two losses away from home against Villa and Brentford so far.

The media is already constructing the Moyes story line and is easy to make those connections. And it might just turn out to be true - be it as a self fulfilling prophecy due to players losing belief or because Potter really is out of his depth and not cut out for this. You might certailny argue if he doesn't turn it around the latter is true regardless. But for now, I think it's still too early to judge him as a complete failure.

Whatever Potter does, of course the elephant in the room will still be there in Boehly, who will continue to act like a drunken ivy league student, taking home any two legged chick with too much make-up on as long as she tells him that his dads Porsche makes him look like the king of the world. So yeah, if we look at it realistically it will probably remain a car crash of a season. But I do think the certainty in writing off Potter is a bit premature if you add context to his recent results. Of course it seems more likely it won't work out, but just want to put some counter arguments to the thread for balance.
 
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The Boy

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I mean, he's doing well now but lets remember how things were looking at the start when Casemiro and Varane weren't on the pitch. Now imagine you have Eriksen, Rashford, Martinez, Shaw, Martial and DDG sidelined on top of that and you're having to start Maguire, Elanga, Dubravka and McFred every week.

That's pretty much the equivalent of our current injury issues.
I really rate Potter and agree he has been hamstrung since joining Chelsea. I'm pretty sure having Boehly step down as DoF will help as he has been splurging like a kid in a sweetshop seemingly without much thought or understanding of balancing a team, I mean you've bought 3 left sided CBs and no Reece James back for example.

Given a preseason and a recovering injury list Potter will do well. I don't get the comparison with Moyes, they are totally different managers, Potter's style is much more progressive, whereas Moyes is bit old school defensive. Potter got a defensive solid team at Brighton playing beautiful attacking football, if he can do that with a Chris Hughton team, he can do the same easily at Chelsea, but he needs time. Fortunately I think Boehly will give him time as he seems bought into the project.

You just need to buy sensibly for a change!