LONDON — Graham Potter’s arrival at Chelsea last September was supposed to herald a new era of stability at the club after a period of unprecedented turbulence. Instead, co-controlling owners Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital’s Behdad Eghbali are looking for a new head coach less than seven months after making their first managerial appointment.
The turmoil began last February, when then-owner Roman Abramovich announced his intention to pass control of the club to its trustees. This was a preemptive move that failed to prevent the United Kingdom government sanctioning Abramovich over alleged ties to Russia President Vladimir Putin, which, following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, effectively forced Chelsea’s sale to trigger a whirlwind few months.
Boehly and Eghbali completed their £2.5 billion takeover at the end of May. Tensions continued, though, as relations quickly became strained with head coach Thomas Tuchel during a frantic summer in which the club spent £270 million to sign players, the second-biggest outlay ever by any side in a single window.
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Tuchel was sacked less than a week after the window closed following an internal 100-day review conducted by Boehly and Eghbali that analysed all aspects of the club. Potter was identified as a progressive, innovative appointment designed to lead a long-term strategy and his arrival from Brighton & Hove Albion was swift, coming barely 24 hours after Tuchel’s exit.
On Sunday, Potter was sacked after less than seven months in charge, winning 12 of his 31 games in charge. Where did it all go wrong?
In many ways, Potter was the opposite of Tuchel. Cynics would argue that was the case in terms of pedigree: Tuchel is a Champions League winner and lifted trophies with Borussia Dortmund and Paris Saint-Germain. Potter’s highlights included winning the Svenska Cupen and three promotions in five seasons with Swedish club Ostersunds before taking Brighton into the top half of the Premier League — the latter of which, while lacking the notoriety of Tuchel’s accomplishments, was no small feat.
Boehly and Eghbali saw more welcome contrasts, though. Among the reasons for Tuchel’s exit was a breakdown in communications.
Sources have told ESPN that Tuchel had little interest in what he believed was micromanagement from above, resisting the desire for daily conversations about the team.
Equally, Tuchel was frustrated that his influence over the club’s transfer policy would be diluted as a new structure was put in place above him. There were disagreements over targets, perhaps most famously in Tuchel’s reluctance to countenance a move for Cristiano Ronaldo, then at Manchester United, despite Boehly repeatedly suggesting the transfer.
Sources say Tuchel expected to be sacked in preseason, but the axe only fell six days after the summer window closed.
Boehly and Eghbali went for Potter partly because they believed him to be an excellent communicator, better suited to working within the framework they were putting in place. Chelsea now have co-sporting directors in Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart along with technical director Christopher Vivell, Joe Shields, Kyle Macaulay and Jim Fraser, who are responsible for talent management and recruitment. Potter knew Winstanley from their time together at Brighton. He spent a decade with Macaulay at Ostersunds, Swansea City and Brighton.
Whereas Tuchel had little interest in anything other than being a coach and recommending players, Potter, 47, was prepared to invest more time in helping to strengthen this coalition. There was perhaps also a difference in that while Tuchel had operated at the highest level for a number of years, Chelsea were palpably Potter’s biggest job to date, and therefore Potter was a little more malleable in accepting the conditions surrounding the role.
Sources told ESPN that Chelsea paid Brighton up to £21m to buy Potter out of his contract on the south coast, a further sign of the conviction Boehly and Eghbali held that they were getting the right man.
The new owners wanted to accelerate their revolution and spent aggressively in the transfer market, overhauled the backroom staff and have tried to make strides in determining how to move forward with Stamford Bridge, whether that is through redevelopment or relocating to a new site. Potter’s job, therefore, became about binding this speedily assembled squad together and keeping calm in the eye of the storm as so much continued to change around him.
Sources have told ESPN that Boehly and Eghbali made a visit to the club’s Cobham training base at the start of March, something they tried to do at least once a month. Three successive defeats preceded that visit, and outsiders could be forgiven for thinking an ominous mood might permeate the training pitches given mounting speculation about Potter’s position, but the truth was different. One training ground source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “Everything was still really relaxed that day. Maybe too relaxed — it might be part of the problem.”
Potter invested time to get to know his players. Sources say he was keen on one-on-one meetings and arranged a flurry of them before the Champions League round-of-16 second leg against Dortmund. Potter knew he needed to quickly foster team spirit with so many changes to his squad. Perhaps that relaxed feel slid on occasion into a lack of urgency, a radical departure from the ruthless culture that epitomised Abramovich’s ownership.
Boehly and Eghbali sincerely wanted Potter’s appointment to work. They were determined to give him time to succeed, and it appeared as though knocking out Dortmund to reach a Champions League quarterfinal could be the turning point for Potter to finally begin forging a new path.
The team’s cyclical shortcomings returned, though.
The familiar pattern of Chelsea’s failures began to reflect badly on the manager. The Blues would keep the ball, fail to score and then concede soft goals. It happened time and again, with Saturday’s defeat to Aston Villa a classic case of what ailed the team: 27 shots, eight on target, with an expected goals figure of 2.09 and 69% possession, but still they lost 2-0.
The calibre and expense of the players now at his disposal only made Potter’s lack of experience at the highest level feel more of an obstacle to success. There were concerns he had shown poor judgment in a series of selection decisions, not least in using Hakim Ziyech when the winger reportedly travelled to France without the club’s permission in hopes of joining Paris Saint-Germain in January, only for a clerical error to deny him the move he wanted.
