When Brighton and Hove Albion were lost in the darkness of a seven-game winless slump last winter, with a horror run of fixtures ahead, Graham Potter stayed remarkably calm. He didn’t make his players run harder or train longer, or pick apart their mistakes. Instead he gathered them in a room to discuss how they were feeling, and how they could harness their failure.
“He always tries to speak with us about psychological things,” Brighton’s Argentine midfielder Alexis MacAllister said recently. “He tries to do meetings for us to think about situations… it’s something not every manager does.” Results had put Potter under pressure and some of his more unusual decisions were inviting scrutiny, but he never lost the respect of his dressing room and never allowed a spiral of negativity to take hold. They responded with successive wins away at Arsenal and Spurs, and lost only once more all season in a spell that further elevated his reputation.
