Robbie Fowler sends Graham Potter brutal reality check after "nonsense" claims
Right. I need to get this off my chest. I’ve nothing against Graham Potter, I think he’s a damn good coach. But I've heard some nonsense spoken about his position in recent days.
I have the impression he’s a bit of a media darling, and I have no problem with that, because it shows he’s aware there is more to management than simply coaching.
But there seems to be a lot of debate about the rights and wrongs of him coming under pressure. Of course he should come under pressure - it’s a results-based business, with the emphasis on business.
He’s won one of his last nine matches, lost eight of the last 11, and his team are below Fulham, Brighton and Brentford in the table. That means pressure. And I can tell you this, it doesn’t matter if the media like him, if he’s a favourite of the CEO, or the owners back him.
As soon as the fans start chanting against you, as soon as they sing, ‘you don’t know what you’re doing’, or whatever, then you’re a goner. And they will turn completely, if results don’t improve sharpish.
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We may not like it, we may feel that social media has gotten out of hand, that the reactions these days are becoming too viscous, too lacking in decency and are just plain wrong, but it’s a fact of modern football life.
Graham Potter is under huge pressure as Chelsea manager (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)I’ll repeat, it’s a business. I don’t like that as a football fan, but it’s something that increasingly dawned on me as I became more experienced in the sport. There’s no loyalty, just cold hard decisions based purely on financials. When was the last time a crowd properly turned on a manager and he survived? Maybe Mikel Arteta, to a certain extent.
Perhaps you could make a case for Sir Alex Ferguson, though I would suggest criticism of managers was very different in those days. You get the occasional bedsheet daubed with slogans in the crowd, and some booing, but these days, it’s a whole different level.
The only equivalent I can think of recently is not a manager, but Granit Xhaka at Arsenal. Everyone thought he’d be sold as things got so bad, but fair play that he’s done so well this season. Even that’s different for a manager, though. You can come out all you like as an owner and offer whatever backing you want, but when the crowd turns, there’s no future.
I’m not just thinking of Potter here, but Frank Lampard at Everton, no matter what his owner said last week. And Nathan Jones at Southampton, and every other boss who hits a bad run, no matter how short or long you’ve been there.
Should Chelsea be patient? Of course they should. They believed in their manager when they signed him just a few months ago, and that shouldn’t change after an early bad run.
But again, they have a right to decide otherwise, because it is the owners who put the money in, and they are ultimately the ones who must make the business decisions, rightly or wrongly. I’d say this, too: managers are like footballers - some have the character, the personality, the ability to adapt to the biggest stage, and some freeze on it.
Graham Potter should be given the time to turn it around (PA)We all know many examples of players who just don’t cope with the expectation levels at the biggest clubs, so why should it be different for managers? Do we know that Graham Potter has the capacity to cope with the demands at Chelsea?
Not after coaching at Leeds University, Ostersund, Swansea and Brighton we don’t. But then we didn’t know Jurgen Klopp did, after managing at Mainz. Maybe he doesn’t, in which case, you couldn’t argue with the sack.
Not that I’m advocating that - I’m saying we don’t know. And I also think he’s shown enough as a coach to be given a chance at the higher level, even if it’s always a risk. Personally, I think the top four has already gone for Chelsea this season, even with a new manager. They’d need too many clubs above them to have really poor runs.
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So you write it off, think about progressing in the Champions League, and give him the rest of the season to turn things around and put his own imprint on the players and the club.
And you know what, maybe the players don’t fancy him. There is a bit of a look of that about the performances, some of the players don’t seem interested at all.
And If the owners feel they have to finish in the top four, then I would argue it's within their rights to try to close the 10-point gap with someone else. Mauricio Pochettino maybe? Or even going back to Thomas Tuchel; I’ve heard of worse plans. Whatever happens, let’s not hide from the fact that football is a brutal business, and results are the only thing that counts.
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