Graham Potter is excited for Chelsea's next steps following their £300million transfer spend in the January window. The Blues added the likes of Benoit Badiashile, Mykhailo Mudryk and Noni Madueke over the course of the month and capped off their spending with a Premier League record fee on Enzo Fernandez.
Behdad Eghbali, who was a visitor at Chelsea training along with Todd Boehly on Thursday, helped spearhead a busy month for the Blues' recruitment team. That work has drawn much critique but it is impossible to ignore the ambition.
The business will cause some issues too. Only three players can be added to Chelsea's Champions League squad and one player already at the club will have to miss out, while there are set to be a number of disappointed figures on each matchday when they are unable to play.
READ MORE: Enzo Fernandez outlines Chelsea Champions League ambition after £106.7m deadline day transfer
It continues a period of transition since the club's takeover in the summer and sees the swathes of changes around the club continue with more new faces having arrive at Stamford Bridge. Potter accepts the difficults but understands his role is to simply leave the club in a better state than when he arrived, even if that means managing a larger squad than expected for the moment.
He explained: "I think it’s been tough for everybody because there was change in the summer, there’s been change previously to that, there’s been a 20 year ownership which has moved on and a different one’s come in.
“Loads of things have happened that make it suboptimal. Let’s say that. But if I wanted a nice, easy life then I would have stayed at previous employments. The point of this opportunity was the challenge of trying to shape and help and support a football club in quite significant transition. That’s what it is.
“What we’ve done in this window is exciting, the players that we’ve got are exciting, you can see the direction we’re trying to go in which is building for the future but at the same time quality that can compete now.
“I think it’s, and I’m going to use the word again, it’s exciting times for me. As much as the manual might say something different, things are never perfect and you just have to make the best of it.
“My job is to help the club get better and constantly improve and when you look back on all my time on all my jobs, when I have left the football clubs they have all been in a better place than from when I arrived. That’s essentially the job of a head coach, to help the club, support the club, improve the club and improve the team. And take on the challenge.”
Potter does not believe his role is as simple as being handed players and making it work however. He wants to be embedded within the ethos of the club.
He added: "We are a football club and I am a part of that. I am the head coach and my job is to support the team, the recruitment team and everything that goes on to try to make the best decisions. My job is to understand the desire of the club, the ambition of the club, what direction we want to go in. I am delighted with the players we have. It doesn’t come without challenges but I am certainly not going to complain about that because who am I to complain about anything. I have got nothing to complain about."
The activity has been a dramatic shift from Potter's previous experiences. It's impossible to ignore that Chelsea's ambitions are higher than what he has experienced before and the budget has matched that.
Potter explained: "I’ve spent seven years at Ostersunds, a year at Swansea where we pretty much had to sell everybody and be creative with who we were using, at Brighton obviously three and a bit years there, it’s a different model, so you have to take the experiences, take the things you learnt in that context and apply them here even though it is different, like you say, totally. It would be wrong of me to think I’m in Brighton or back at Ostersunds, we’re at Chelsea, the numbers are different, the ambition is different in terms of where we’re trying to get to."
While the Blues have added players in multiple positions in the last four weeks or so, it could be argued they have not found a solution to what has been their most obvious problem this season. Chelsea have scored just 22 times in 20 Premier League outings, putting pressure on their backline to keep clean sheets.
Kai Havertz has been Potter's preferred choice leading the line while Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang has struggled to make an impression. It will be hoped the likes of Joao Felix can have an impact but the former Brighton coach hopes everyone can impact the team's overall attacking ability.
Potter explained: "We have tried to address it in terms of helping the team attack better. You can zoom into one position but in the last four or five years teams have won the Premier League without a recognised centre-forward. I understand the point but it is better for the team to attack better, to play better, to create more chances, to be more dangerous in attack and that will solve that problem."
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