Graham Potter is up against it at Chelsea but the manager isn't under any illusions over the magnitude of his task. After joining from Brighton two months ago, the 47-year-old only has two more matches to get through before the winter World Cup brings some relative calm for him.
In an already unprecedented season, Potter was appointed less than 48 hours after Thomas Tuchel's shock sacking and has had to experience a fixture list turned up the maximum level with amplified levels of expectation and attention.
Despite a good start, two points from four league games and back-to-back defeats - including a 4-1 drubbing at Brighton - have left the club with a dark cloud hanging overhead as the World Cup approaches and Potter faces the task of winning over fans that have been left in a state of disillusionment.
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Chelsea have been unstable since Antonio Conte's departure in 2018 but their gradual decline, questionable transfer recruitment and the unreachable levels of Liverpool and Manchester City in the meantime has created a paradox. The Blues haven't been close to winning the title since 2017 when they last finished top, despite spending more than £500 million on new players.
The turnover of managers and players with differing philosophies came to a head after Roman Abramovich sold the club earlier this year and now Potter is stuck with some frustrated players that want to leave, ones that don't fit his style, and a club being reimagined, with the constant backdrop of the need for instant results.
It's like trying to make and sell appetising food at a sandwich shop but the store is being refurbished, ripped up and there's a constant drilling going on.
Although he has been given a five-year contract, nearly three times longer than Tuchel's original deal in 2021, the narrative is that he will still struggle to win over the owners. Jamie Carragher, speaking on The Overlap, in partnership with Sky Bet, continued this train of thought, saying, "The problem for Graham Potter is that he’s at Chelsea.
"What I mean by this is that when we talk about Erik Ten Hag and Mikel Arteta coming in, getting time to embed his plans, and getting transfer windows to bring players out, the history of Chelsea tells you that this doesn’t happen.
“Will it happen with the new owner? That is hard to see when he got rid of a manager only a few weeks into the season, especially someone who had won the Champions League for the club. I always thought it was a bizarre decision to get rid of Thomas Tuchel."
Ultimately it is completely uncertain how the new owners will act. There is always a sense of wanting a fresh start from a business perspective, the Saudi Arabian Public investment fund takeover of Newcastle were quick to get rid of Steve Bruce and bring in Eddie Howe, but Bruce hadn't won a Champions League 12 months earlier.
Tuchel was, and remains, one of the most popular managerial figures to have been at Chelsea in recent history. It will not be logical to most that Boehly and Clearlake Capital, with no previous experience in football, have a reason behind sacking Tuchel and going with Potter. On the outside it does look like a monumental risk, but for them it's about pressing restart.
Early signs are that this isn't entirely a continuation of Old Chelsea, in fact it's a statement of wanting to move to New Chelsea quickly. What that entails nobody seems to know. Boehly may not have plans for eventualities cemented in Champions League football, but Potter will not be judged on what Chelsea have done, he'll be judged on what they can do and how that doing looks in the wider scope of what Chelsea are going to become.
The ruthless, hard-edged machine has largely gone. This shouldn't be a surprise either, no club in world football has matched the efficiency of such great managerial turnovers in combination with trophy winning, why would Boehly even think about trying? That's not his way.
Chelsea haven't really competed at the top table consistently for over 10 years and the circumstances around their 2017 title win was miraculous and the form since then has been a more accurate description of what was going to happen. A chase for success will bring some success, but is one Champions League every 10 years an appropriate way to justify spending £1.5bn on transfers across 19-years for Abramovich?
Rightly or wrongly, this is not going to be the way of Boehly-Clearlake, and Carragher did add that he was just pleased to see an English manager given a chance on this stage.
“I’m delighted for Graham Potter, and to have an English manager in such a big job, but he’s never been in that position before, in terms of managing a huge club, and managing in the Champions League," he said.
"He’s turned it around in the Champions League brilliantly and got them through to the next round. In his head, he is thinking that he has had a great start at Chelsea – but the last two or three games have gone the opposite way, and it almost feels like it has blown up in his face.
“You look at where Chelsea were last season - £275 million was spent on the squad this summer, and you can’t believe what you’re seeing. Their end product was so much worse [than last season] against Brighton and Arsenal, after spending that much money – it feels bizarre.”
For Potter, he has come under intense scrutiny for logistical and tactical decisions in the past fortnight and faces an overhaul of players in the next two transfer windows. That's when progress is more likely to be evident, but even gradual progression won't get him up to the pantheon of world-class managers, according to Gary Neville.
“Graham Potter is an elite coach, better than I will ever be. As a manager, seeing Pep Guardiola and Jürgen Klopp, sometimes their presence – they are like animals, and Graham Potter is going to have to try and break into that realm of managers. We want these English managers to step up to the next level – but it’s hard!”
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