Former Chelsea manager Graham Potter has suggested that his time at Stamford Bridge might have turned out differently if the club had allowed him to bring in more experienced players.
Following the surprising dismissal of Thomas Tuchel, Chelsea paid £21 million to secure Potter and his coaching staff from Brighton, only to part ways with him after just over six months due to a poor run of results.
The Clearlake consortium, led by Todd Boehly, had overseen a £300m transfer spree the summer before Potter’s arrival, focusing on signing young, promising talents from across..Continue Reading
Europe.
Chelsea had also been linked with potential moves for established England internationals Harry Kane and Declan Rice, and Potter feels that expecting immediate success was unrealistic given the youthful nature of the squad Chelsea assembled.
‘It was almost like the perfect storm,’ Potter told The Telegraph. ‘It was 14 matches in six weeks prior to the World Cup. It was like you were in the washing machine, that’s what we said within the staff, because the games kept coming and we had no preparation time or anything.
‘We lost Reece [James] and Wesley [Fofana] to injury. I think we had the most players at the World Cup and pretty quickly afterwards we lost Raheem [Sterling] and Christian Pulisic.
‘Then the ownership decided to invest a lot of money in the squad, £300 million in the January transfer window.
‘Now, if you are spending £300 million on players that are coming from outside the Premier League, from countries that are having a mid-season break, then the reality is you can’t just imagine they are going to hit the ground running and everything’s going to be fine.
‘But, obviously, if you spend £300 million, the pressure on the team goes up and the pressure on the coach goes up. And people go: ‘Come on then, you’ve spent all this money.’
‘I think if I’d have spent it on Harry Kane and Declan Rice, then fair enough, but at the time that was the decision. We tried to support it as best we could, but it left us with a challenge of a lot of players after January and then they can’t go anywhere.’
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