Graham Potter is lucky to have a scaled down version of pre-season to acclimatise to his new surroundings at Chelsea. The manager will have waited over three weeks by the time his team face Crystal Palace in his first league match in charge and it will be nearly one month after his first match that he watches Chelsea play AC Milan in their next Champions League match.
The drawn out start to life is a blessing in disguise as he gets to take some more time to make important decisions and to prepare fully for the period ahead. In the 42 days between Chelsea's next match and the last one before the winter World Cup in Qatar the Blues will play 13 games, one every 3.2 days.
Compare that to the similarly gruelling schedule last winter that was made even tougher due to the re-emergence of Covid-19 effecting matches, Thomas Tuchel managed nine games between October 1st and November 12th. In the most packed period there were 15 matches in 49 days, also coming to 3.2 days between games.
