A few years ago Todd Boehly did a TV interview where he defined his approach to business as “creating value where there are value gaps”, or in other words seeing the picture more clearly, doing it better, being, at every moment, the smartest guy in the room. Although, watching Boehly and his co-controlling owner Behdad Eghbali’s activities at Chelsea over the last year, it is tempting to wonder exactly which room we’re talking about here, exactly how un-smart that room would have to be to make this dynamic work.
Certainly that room isn’t, to date, European club football, which is proving, once again, to be razor sharp in identifying the mark at the table, out there slapping down those chips, top hat askew, loose rolls of cash fluttering gaily from his trouser turn-ups. And least of all on the day Chelsea have finally decided to sack Graham Potter, thus taking the total cost of hiring Graham Potter for seven months to at least £50m.
This total is made up of a £21m release fee to Brighton, a £13m payoff for Champions League winner Thomas Tuchel and something similar for Potter now (this is rarely the full value of a contract, but hey, we’re on Todd time now! Value gaps!). To this must be added the cost of missing out on the Champions League and the procurement of another manager. Add in £550m spent on a laughably random assortment of players, almost all of whom have already depreciated because everyone looks bad in this light. And right now it is hard to think of a more concertedly idiotic spell in charge of an elite football club than the last 12 months of mercurial disruption, a business model so disruptive it seeks, above all, to aggressively disrupt its own product, because, hey, nobody expects that.
At the very least the Chelsea board has finally made a good decision, albeit that decision is to undo its own self-evidently appalling decision. It was painfully obvious from the start that Potter was not the right fit. In fact, he was so obviously the wrong fit it was tempting to squint in search of some brilliant masterplan just out of sight, because this couldn’t be serious, could it? Here we had the ultimate slow-burn process manager, thrown into a chaos of panic-capitalism, shifting sands, eight mid-season signings, an acquisitions department touring the world like Father Christmas on crack.
Here, at a club that demands swagger, panache and a little bit of nastiness from its managers, was a coach who looks like he’d say sorry if you stole his watch, who at one point had to defend himself from claims he didn’t become angry enough in a press conference while defending himself for not having become angry enough during a game.
Why, really why, would anyone appoint Graham Potter and then make such vigorous attempts to give him the least Graham Potter-like working environment imaginable? Why create such impossible flux and expect positive results? Why not just let him get on with trying to make Ruben Loftus-Cheek good, with being Graham Potter?
This is not to suggest that Potter hasn’t made mistakes or poor in-game decisions or shown limitations at this stage in his career. In the end the job is to make this work. But the contrast between what he had done before and what he was asked to do at Chelsea was vast. Not only did Potter arrive with no experience at this level, he found himself confronted with an utterly nuts version of what this level was supposed it be in the first place. Chelsea needed an impresario to oversee this period, a charisma-merchant, an on-the-hoof kind of guy. They needed Carlo Ancelotti’s left eyebrow, José Mourinho’s shredded suit trouser knees. Instead they hired the managerial equivalent of an extremely practicable zip-up fleece.
2022-23, 13 (record): Scott Parker (Bournemouth), Thomas Tuchel (Chelsea), Graham Potter (Brighton, joined Chelsea), Bruno Lage (Wolves), Steven Gerrard (Aston Villa), Ralph Hasenhüttl (Southampton), Frank Lampard (Everton), Jesse Marsch (Leeds), Nathan Jones (Southampton), Patrick Vieira (Crystal Palace), Antonio Conte (Tottenham), Brendan Rodgers (Leicester), Graham Potter (Chelsea).
2021-22, 10: Xisco Muñoz (Watford), Steve Bruce (Newcastle), Nuno Espírito Santo (Tottenham), Daniel Farke (Norwich), Dean Smith (Aston Villa), Ole Gunnar Solskjær (Man Utd), Rafa Benítez (Everton), Claudio Ranieri (Watford), Marcelo Bielsa (Leeds), Sean Dyche (Burnley).
2020-21, four: Slaven Bilic (West Brom), Frank Lampard (Chelsea), Chris Wilder (Sheffield United), José Mourinho (Tottenham)
2019-20, seven: Javi Gracia (Watford), Mauricio Pochettino (Tottenham), Unai Emery (Arsenal), Quique Sánchez Flores (Watford), Marco Silva (Everton), Manuel Pellegrini (West Ham), Nigel Pearson (Watford).
2018-19, six: Slavisa Jokanovic (Fulham), Mark Hughes (Southampton), José Mourinho (Man Utd), David Wagner (Huddersfield), Claude Puel (Leicester), Claudio Ranieri (Fulham).
Premier League's longest-serving managers
1 Jürgen Klopp (Liverpool) – seven years, 177 days
2 Pep Guardiola (Man City) – six years, 276 days
3 Thomas Frank (Brentford) – four years, 169 days
4 Mikel Arteta (Arsenal) – three years, 102 days
5 David Moyes (West Ham) – three years, 94 days
6 Marco Silva (Fulham) – one year, 276 days
7 Steve Cooper (Nottm Forest) – one year, 194 days
8 Eddie Howe (Newcastle) – one year, 146 days
9 Erik ten Hag (Man Utd) – 315 days
10 Gary O'Neil (Bournemouth) – 216 days
11 Roberto De Zerbi (Brighton) – 197 days
12 Unai Emery (Aston Villa) – 153 days
And frankly, Potter deserves better than this. English football needs its Potters. Here is a manager who has done well at every level until now, who has built teams and improved players, created good energy. Whereas, this model of Chelsea is a brutal, rapacious destructive thing. Vast amounts of money will be sluiced through this entity before it is done. But other careers besides Potter’s will be harmed or stalled by coming into contact with it.
Potter has enough goodwill, enough credit to find another Potter-style place that requires Potter-style values. The real question is where all of this leaves Chelsea, which is not an indestructible commodity, which must now draw yet more seed money from its apparently bottomless funding partners, and reinvent itself once again. This process can’t go on for ever. In the course of his TV interview Boehly also described his approach as being “opportunistic on two verticals”, those that are “growth intact” or “distressed in value”. It is tempting to ask which one of those Chelsea look like right now.
