'There were so many players, some had to change in corridor' - Potter's surreal Chelsea reign (2024)

The hierarchy at Chelsea knew they had reached a crossroads.

The team’s performances stalled, frustration was building in the stands and new signings, bought at a premium over a frenzied transfer window, were struggling. The head coach’s team selections were erratic and increasingly ineffective. Even his performances in press conferences had become unpredictable. The latest defeat brought matters to a head — there was only one thing to be done.

It took the board around 12 hours to agree that change was needed to salvage the season and decide on the highly rated young coach in whom they would place their trust to take this club forward, even though he’d been on their radar for some time.

In the immediate aftermath of that meeting back in September, Thomas Tuchel was sacked and Graham Potter, whose reputation had soared following his success at Brighton & Hove Albion, was installed on a five-year contract. He would be the man to help the Todd Boehly-Clearlake Capital ownership group achieve its long-term ambitions and the first head coach not appointed by Roman Abramovich since 2004.

It has taken less than seven months for that decision to unravel.

Potter watched his side be beaten at home by Aston Villa on Saturday, the 11th defeat of his brief tenure. Grumbling discontent had given way to open mutiny among the fanbase with chants of “You don’t know what you’re doing” echoing around Stamford Bridge. There was a sense of inevitability over what followed.

A little over 24 hours later, Potter was fired.

The Athletic has spoken to sources close to all those concerned, granting them anonymity to protect relationships and positions, to paint a picture of how the Chelsea-Potter project fell apart so quickly. We can reveal that:

• While relations with Potter were never hostile, key senior players were increasingly sceptical and felt he was out of his depth
• Some referred to him as “Harry” or “Hogwarts” behind his back, while some team selections caused confusion
• So bloated had Chelsea’s first-team squad become that some players had to sit on the floor during team meetings while others changed for training in the corridor
• Some training sessions had to involve a nine-v-nine game on top of the usual 11v11 such is the size of the squad
• Todd Boehly may draw the focus but Behdad Eghbali is the real power behind the throne at Stamford Bridge and some considered the presence of the owners, watching first-hand so often from the sidelines at training, to be unnerving, even though Potter had no issue with it
• Eyebrows were raised at the head coach’s pledge to try and win the “f****** Champions League” at a recent meeting with supporters, a statement that seemed out of character
• The hierarchy acted when, backed up by data, they determined the team was showing no evidence of progress

Potter had insisted earlier this season that he, alone, was “not the problem” at Chelsea and that he had taken on “probably the toughest job in football” given the state of flux at the club, as well as the reputation of the man he had replaced at the helm. Yet even he would concede that he simply did not win enough games to retain his position.

This is the story of how the club’s long-term commitment to his talent fizzled out after a mere 31 games in charge.

There was an element of the unconventional about Potter’s departure.

The 47-year-old was never unpopular in the Chelsea dressing room. He is a likeable man. The players found him approachable — in stark contrast to plenty of the managers who had preceded him at the club — and protective of the group. The owners got on with him well. Most players appreciated he was working in difficult, even exceptional, circ*mstances within a setup still digesting a period of severe upheaval. They were happy to cut him some slack.

But, inevitably, that latitude started to waver as results deteriorated and the prospect of Champions League qualification — barring an unlikely success in this season’s competition — receded. Real Madrid await in the last eight, while defeat to Villa left Chelsea in the bottom half of the Premier League. They are 12 points adrift of the top four having been eliminated from both domestic cup competitions (albeit both times away at Manchester City) with the Christmas decorations barely boxed and put away.

Attitudes had been on the turn for a while.

What once had been welcomed as his empathetic approach had some players questioning whether he was too nice and not ruthless enough. There was no bad cop to offer balance and snap the group out of self-pity. Neither Potter nor his assistant, Billy Reid, sought to play that role. Indeed, the head coach’s eagerness to learn how he was perceived by his squad — one source suggested to The Athletic that Potter had asked a member of the team, “What do the players think of me?” — merely undermined his status.

This is not the Chelsea squad of old. The days of the strong-willed and influential cabal of Frank Lampard, John Terry, Petr Cech and Didier Drogba are long gone. That clique had the ear of Abramovich and would gladly express any doubts over a manager’s approach if they believed standards had slipped.

Yet Potter still inherited Champions League winners in the autumn; strong characters used to life at an elite club competing for trophies; players accustomed to working for a manager with clout and charisma whose personality permeates through the setup. Eight of the European Cup winners from 2021 were also in the 20-man matchday party on Saturday. Anyone managing a squad like this has to be headstrong.

Worrying about how he was perceived, rightly or wrongly, was considered a sign of weakness. A sign that he might be out of his depth.

The (hardly original) “Harry” and “Hogwarts” monikers that some pinned to him were done so jokingly, but they carried a hint of ridicule. The Englishman was not feared in the way Tuchel had been. From the outset, as a head coach attempting to make his mark at an elite club for the first time, he did not command the same level of respect.

The players heard his public utterances, his insistence that they had given him everything after each stuttering performance, and the feeling festered that he was floundering. He would tell them to trust the process, trying to convince them things would turn, but those in the group who had been there and done it had their doubts. To them, Potter lacked authority. The sense of mutiny may have been more understated and never erupted into a full-blown revolt, but the misgivings among those players who really mattered were bubbling to the surface.

They were even more incredulous when Potter did attempt something more tub-thumping, snapping out of the mundane to tell a fans’ forum that Chelsea would “try and win the f****** Champions League”. They did double-takes as clips circulated on social media. Hearing the head coach swear, whether in public or not, felt so out of character.

Graham Potter: “We’ll try to win the f*cking Champions League”

That’s more like a Chelsea manager.

pic.twitter.com/NdIoMlvyo6

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That appearance came on the back of three successive wins, including the critical elimination of Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League knockout phase when his job had been on the line.

Some of the players put it down to giddiness on the back of a run of results. It looked as if he was trying to be something he is not and fuelled the sense Potter had not looked comfortable in the Chelsea spotlight from day one, right down to his interactions with the supporters.

Plenty in the squad, probably unfairly, concluded he was simply doing his masters’ bidding; that Potter was a “yes” man complying with everything Boehly and Eghbali laid down, whether on transfer strategy or even team selection. Those close to him and the owners strongly reject the suggestion any influence was exerted from above. But the fact the rumour was circulating within the squad was unhealthy and damaging.

They watched the rush of incoming transfers in January, an influx that left Cobham bursting at the seams, and wondered why the head coach merely went along with it all, apparently reluctant to object to the break-up of a team that had won the club’s second European Cup in 2021. Youngsters with relatively little experience, certainly of the Premier League, were arriving for huge fees and being thrust either straight into the team or onto the bench at the expense of the seniors previously considered mainstays of the side.

The recruitment appeared scattergun. It certainly did not follow any discernible pattern to fit the head coach’s system and brand of football. Potter was left with a sprinkling of attacking midfielders and wingers and no natural goalscoring centre-forward.

The players only learned of the sacking on Sunday evening via social media. Some were out for dinner as the calls and WhatsApp messages started pinging. On the one hand, there was little surprise given the way results had deteriorated so markedly since the end of October — there had been three wins in 17 matches in all competitions through to early March.

Yet, if there was a sense of shock, it stemmed from the conviction that the owners had felt so unlikely to dismiss “their man”, a figure apparently so acquiescent. Not least because Boehly-Clearlake had forked out an eyewatering £21.5million ($26.7m) to prise Potter and his staff from Brighton in the first place.

Some of his team selections had prompted concern of late.

There had been the confusion around Trevoh Chalobah in the build-up to the Villa fixture when Potter and his staff had spoken at length to the centre-half, even outlining his duties at set plays. The 23-year-old had walked away from those meetings convinced he would be starting his first Premier League game in over two months, only to find himself back on the bench with Reece James employed on the right of the back three.

His frustration was understandable. But that was not the first time that had happened to a player in recent weeks.

There was bemusem*nt, too, that Hakim Ziyech — so desperate to force through a loan move to Paris Saint-Germain on deadline day in January that he took himself off to the French club’s offices — was thrust straight back into the team once the window had closed and his move fallen through.

Potter considered that a sensible way of reintegrating the Moroccan into the group, an attempt to appease a disaffected senior player, but it sent out an odd message to the rest. Critically, it did not pay off. Ziyech, who will be available for sale in the summer, made little impact and has not featured since the team’s meek defeat at Tottenham towards the end of February.

There may be similar regret at Kalidou Koulibaly’s inclusion in that fixture, preferred ahead of the previously impressive Benoit Badiashile given the young Frenchman was not in Chelsea’s Champions League squad and the second leg of the knockout tie against Dortmund loomed large. Eyebrows were raised in some quarters that Joao Felix was flung straight into the fray in the derby at Fulham just a day after completing his loan move from Atletico Madrid.

The forward was initially impressive at Craven Cottage only to be sent off before the hour mark — an offence that carried a three-match ban and left the loanee kicking his heels on the sidelines.

His rush of blood that night was hardly the head coach’s fault. Perhaps Potter felt that, with results on the slide, his experienced players offered more chance of mounting a recovery in preference to the youngsters signed in January, who werestill adjusting to new surroundings.

If so, then that logic did not apply to Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, a signing the hierarchy were not unanimous on. The striker had been signed for and eager to renew acquaintances with Tuchel — the pair had previously worked together at Dortmund — when he was approached but, with his form ineffective, he was phased out under Potter and omitted from the Champions League squad for the knockout rounds.

There were some in the squad perplexed that Aubameyang, an instinctive goalscorer of proven pedigree, even if he is now 33 and in the twilight of his career, was overlooked when the side so clearly lacked a natural No 9. Some concluded the message not to select the Gabonese had come down from on high — something the club deny — with suggestions the forward is on a high fixed salary with considerable appearance fees to be paid when he benefits from game time. By leaving him on the sidelines, Chelsea were saving money.

Yet other sources have toldThe Athletic his omission was justified on the evidence of his performances since moving to Chelsea from Barcelona last summer and the data accumulated over his 18 appearances (of which only four have been starts in the Premier League) and training sessions to date. The player has made clear his dismay that the reunion with Tuchel had amounted to no more than 59 minutes in Zagreb in what proved to be the German’s last game in charge. Still now his absence hasn’t been properly explained.

Those who were picked changed from week to week. The tactical flexibility for which Potter had been lauded at Brighton, all fluid switches of formation within games, had initially felt so appealing on the assumption he would now be working with a better calibre of player. The methods that had taken time to sink in at his previous club would take hold quicker in this environment.

Yet, once the nine-match unbeaten start under his stewardship had been wrecked at Brighton, of all places, that constant shifting of personnel and team structure started to feel more like an indicator of underlying chaos.

As it was, seven months proved too fleeting a tenure in which to change the whole culture of a club — positively, at least. It had taken Potter far longer to achieve that at Ostersunds in Sweden, and Brighton. Even the most exceptional of coaches would have struggled to instigate positive change so swiftly given the volatility at Chelsea.

Potter ended up helplessly swept along by it all.

That assertion, that he had taken on “probably the toughest job in football”, was laughed out of court when it was offered up at a press conference on the eve of the defeat at Fulham, the team’s seventh loss in 10 games. But, given the expectations placed on him at Stamford Bridge, Potter was arguably working in almost impossible circ*mstances.

There had initially been a wave of injuries with which to contend. N’Golo Kante, such a key player to a succession of Chelsea head coaches, was out when Potter arrived and ended up playing only 33 minutes under him after undergoing surgery on a hamstring problem. There were spells on the sidelines for influential players from James to Ben Chilwell, Mason Mount to Thiago Silva. The legacy of last season’s onerous schedule has been felt this time around. The new owners’ eagerness to revamp the medical department, adding to the upheaval, merely served to unsettle in the short term behind the scenes.

Yet from having an apparent paucity of options at one point before the World Cup, the head coach had to contend with very different problems once club football resumed post-Qatar 2022.

Boehly-Clearlake’s desire to rejuvenate the team with an initial wave of summer signings — Raheem Sterling, Koulibaly, Marc Cucurella, Wesley Fofana, Aubameyang — was quickly followed by a gear change towards expensive young recruits in January and left the playing squad unwieldy in the extreme. The spending across the two windows exceeded £500million ($619m). Those bought in pre-season have tended to underwhelm or, at best, only offered flashes of their quality. The majority of the mid-campaign additions are still adjusting to life in alien surroundings.

Even incorporating them into the group has proved a feat.

Most head coaches would prefer to work with a relatively small senior group supplemented, if required, by players filling in from the academy. The general consensus is around 20 senior outfield players, plus two goalkeepers, represents the optimum size to ensure a share of proper game time and attention, as well as instigate improvement in individuals. That was around the size of the squad with which Potter had worked at Brighton.

Yet at Chelsea, as injuries eased post-World Cup, Potter found himself dealing with a first-team group which, at times, amounted to anywhere between 33 and 40 players. Some were youngsters offered a taster with the seniors when more experienced personnel had been absent. Others had been brought in under Tuchel. More, still, arrived as part of the unprecedented mid-season splurge.

Each considered himself worthy of first-team involvement. All would have been hugely frustrated not to be picked. They all craved Potter’s attention.

The logistics of accommodating such a large group into the day-to-day at the team’s Cobham training centre have been mind-boggling. The dressing rooms were reconfigured but, for a period, some of the group had to change into their kit in the corridor outside given there was simply insufficient room for them in the locker room itself. New signings Mykhailo Mudryk and Noni Madueke, players eager to sample life at an elite Premier League club, were duly left on the outside looking in.

Team meetings, usually held in the media theatre within the main building at the training ground, were so cluttered that some players had to sit on the floor.

To have so many players thrust together so quickly, all from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, posed a challenge to unity and spirit. Thinking they might gel overnight was unrealistic. And the bloated nature of the squad inevitably spilled out onto the training ground itself.

One recent session saw Potter instigate an 11 vs 11 game on one pitch while, on a neighbouring playing surface, there was a nine vs nine match taking place simultaneously. All those involved would have considered themselves members of the first-team squad. Even before those out on loan are taken into account, the number of senior players on the books is simply unmanageable.

What chance would any coach have of improving individuals when he would struggle to offer any proper time one-on-one? Given the number of players inevitably on the fringes, how could Potter hope to keep them all happy? How could he even hope to learn what each of the new arrivals might offer? Maybe the ownership hoped he might seize the initiative and send those with little immediate prospect of first-team involvement to train at the academy on the other side of the road that runs through the middle of the Cobham complex.

But such ruthlessness, effectively punishing players who had done nothing wrong, would have gone against Potter’s nature.

A sense of anxiety has undoubtedly affected the club as players wonder how they can negotiate a route into the senior line-up. Those out on loan — from Callum Hudson-Odoi to Levi Colwill and Ethan Ampadu — have seen players of a similar age recruited in their positions in their absence. Even youngsters such as Carney Chukwuemeka and Omari Hutchinson, players who had been convinced to join by the promise of a pathway, have found themselves slipping further down the pecking order.

On the basis that a fit player on the fringes is also potentially a disaffected player, the scope for trouble has been clear.

It is worth acknowledging, too, that the sense of volatility within Chelsea extended beyond the playing and medical side. From the period under sanction through the change in ownership last May and the adjustment that followed, there was a huge restructuring within the club that saw long-serving staff depart. The whole setup remains in transition from boardroom to bootroom. Some roles have not been filled. Others have been tweaked. After 19 years under Abramovich, the scale of change was always likely to prove unsettling.

The players signed by the ancien regime felt it. Even those brought in since the takeover sensed it. In the past, they might have leant on the experience of the head coach and his staff as a source of reassurance, but Potter, too, had been dropped fresh into this maelstrom. At times he felt as if he was guiding a juggernaut through the storm on his own.

The co-owners would argue they provided that support.

They were initially hands-on while still assembling their recruitment and backroom staff but have remained regulars at the training ground as well as on matchday, even with the co-sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart now in place. Boehly and Egbhali have frequently watched sessions from the touchline. Sources close to senior players interpreted something ominous in their visits, presuming the owners have been seeking to micro-manage their head coach and that their presence could not fail to intimidate.

Yet Potter is understood to have been comfortable enough with their attendance acknowledging that, as owners of the club, they were free to come and go as they pleased. Besides, he felt he had a healthy relationship with Boehly and Eghbali. As strong-willed as they were, learning about life as owners of a Premier League club, they had faith in his project.

At least up until the moment they did not.

It was the pathetic second-half capitulation at Tottenham at the end of February that cast proper doubt on belief in the Potter project. That was when Boehly and Eghbali conceded that, perhaps, this was not going to work after all.

Up until then, the ownership had been steadfastly behind their appointment. Having failed to see eye-to-eye with Tuchel, they had wanted a young head coach with fresh ideas, a figure with a burgeoning reputation after his success in steering Brighton to their highest league finish, to oversee the development of a youthful and exciting squad. A head coach to grow with his group.

For Potter, this had been too big an opportunity to turn down.

Chelsea had attacked the mid-season market with vigour and, the hefty deals for Enzo Fernandez and Mudryk aside, bought raw potential in David Fofana, Madueke, Malo Gusto, Andrey Santos and Badiashile. The logic had been that, while not all the additions might go on and fulfil their potential, it was a better strategy to purchase them at relatively reasonable prices now rather than at a premium once they had developed elsewhere.

It was not an exact science. It might all take time. More investment would be required because the balance of the squad was far from ideal, but everything about the approach screamed long-term.

Yet, just as young players represent a risk, so too does a relatively inexperienced manager.

With results having long since turned, the ownership grew concerned at some of the statements Potter was making in his press conferences. There was sympathy that he had received death threats after an inexplicably bad home defeat to bottom-of-the-table Southampton, but his criticisms of Chelsea’s pre-season, echoing those of Tuchel who had been in charge at the time, did not go down well. His regular references to the time afforded to Mikel Arteta and Jurgen Klopp by Arsenal and Liverpool respectively also started to grate.

Potter’s comments may have been honest, but they were perceived as a sign of weakness. That fragility was mirrored out on the pitch.

Against Spurs — a third defeat in succession and sixth in 11 games, only one of which had been won — the side were so rudderless after the interval, so lacking in belief or an obvious game plan, as to cast serious doubt over whether there was any benefit in prolonging the agony.

The team had managed a solitary goal in six matches. Winstanley and Stewart scrutinised the data, yearning for signs of progression, weighing up the pros and cons of pushing on with their commitment to Potter. Yet they found little positive to report.

Was there evidence of a clear strategy? Or of a discernible pattern of play even in defeat? The fans were up in arms, horrified by a run of aimless displays and awful results. The issues, particularly in attacking areas, were recurring. There was no sense of positive development or even real improvement and far too little progress to speak of.

Even in that context, the co-owners hesitated. There would be a mini-revival in the weeks that followed, a flurry of defiant wins including the rousing return leg against Dortmund, but it proved a temporary reprieve.

Decisions as big as the dismissal of a head coach are agreed by the co-owners at Chelsea, with the input of Stewart and Winstanley also important. The structure that has been put in place can look confused and messy from the outside, with the technical director Christopher Vivell also heavily involved and information technically pooled to be fed up the chain. The co-owners will have sought counsel from all key football staff before determining their course of action. They were pursuing this course of action only reluctantly.

Yet the writing was on the wall ahead of the international break when one supporter asked Boehly for his thoughts on the 2-2 draw with Everton, with the co-owner caught on camera describing it as a “s*** f****** match”. The 49-year-old is a convenient public face of the ownership, an instantly recognisable figure. Yet, while theirs is a partnership, the true power lies with Eghbali.

Clearlake Capital owns 62 per cent of Chelsea. The vast majority of the money sunk into the club stems from its funds. Where Boehly ended up wearing his heart on his sleeve across social media that night, Eghbali is as enthusiastic and emotional behind the scenes. He drives the decision-making, guided these days by his recently installed co-sporting directors. In the end, he too was just as unconvinced.

There were discussions overnight in the immediate aftermath of the 2-0 loss to Villa. The talks continued into Sunday. They were conscious that, even at a club infamous for sacking managers, even Abramovich had never dismissed two head coaches in the same season. But in the absence of visible progress or clear improvement out on the pitch and despite having been previously committed to a long-term project bound to endure lulls, they pushed on.

Throughout Sunday, all the club’s key figures spoke with Potter to thank him for his service. It was Winstanley and Stewart who explained the thought process to the squad once the dust had settled on the decision at the start of the week.

So what happens next?

Where the decision to ditch Tuchel and turn to Potter, via a cursory enquiry over Mauricio Pochettino’s interest, had been taken in 12 hours back in September, the ownership are determined to conduct proper due diligence over a successor to Potter. The assumption is that Julian Nagelsmann, sacked by Bayern Munich last month with Tuchel taking his place at the Bundesliga leaders, will be a leading candidate.

There is likely to be competition for the German’s signature. Chelsea have cleared the decks. They have dealt previously with Nagelsmann’s agent, who counts Timo Werner among his clients, and can now seek to gauge whether he is interested.

Yet before any of that happens, Eghbali and Boehly will want to understand why the 35-year-old lost his job at Bayern. They will need to be convinced there is no risk of another personality clash, but that he can also inspire the progression that stalled under Potter.

Nagelsmann is likely to be one of several candidates to be interviewed. Some will be free agents; others will be contracted elsewhere. This time around, the process will take weeks rather than hours to conclude. The co-sporting directors’ priority is ensuring the groundwork is done over what remains of an underwhelming season — Champions League progress aside — so that the club can press on with an appointment and go into the summer with a new head coach in place. Calls and meetings are being scheduled.

Potter and Reid have gone, but the ownership retain faith in the coaching staff left behind — a reality that might feel surprising given Bruno Saltor, who will oversee the team starting with the visit of Liverpool on Tuesday, lacks any kind of managerial experience.

Anthony Barry, coveted by Tuchel in Munich, remains on the staff. Bruno, Bjorn Hamberg, Kyle Macaulay and the highly rated goalkeeper coach Ben Roberts may feel rather compromised by the events of the past few days given their close association with Potter, but they are all on five-year contracts at the club. The hierarchy are working on the assumption they will all remain at Stamford Bridge until at least the summer.

The board consider the continuity his presence provides as beneficial, for all the team’s recent failings. He will hold the fort until an interim, or even a permanent manager, is identified and secured. “I’m going to focus on today, on tomorrow, but I have an amazing relationship with and pure admiration for Graham,” offered Bruno on Monday. “We will assess later.”

The Spaniard and the other members of Potter’s former backroom staff had continued to live on the south coast since swapping the Amex for Stamford Bridge and were driven up every morning from Brighton. The training ground may still be heaving, but there are now a couple of spare seats in the people carrier transporting the coaching staff to Cobham.

(Additional reporting: Liam Twomey)

(Photos for top image: Marc Atkins / Getty Images; Sebastian Widmann / Getty Images; Alex Davidson / Getty Images; Designed by Sam Richardson)