Said it before, will keep saying it. Any Potter 'success' was purely down to the quality of the recruitment
He stumbled across a midfield of Caicedo, Bissouma and Mac Allister. It didn't take a genius to select them together and it's no real surprise the team all of a sudden went on a glorious run. Obviously, he and his team totally transformed the football and fair play to him for that.
The clue is in your first sentence. Even then, he was pretty slow on the uptake. If Potter was still here, he'd still be using, say, Mitoma, as an impact sub. And Enciso, say, wouldn't be even getting a sniff of game time
Of course, but it is harsh on him to not also conclude the same could be said for De Zerbi. It's not fair to measure one on this basis without the other.
Well it's arguably not true. Let's see what he does next eh?
His performance at Chelsea supports the opinion. But Chelsea are a basketcase with wild and fundamental problems. It might not be a reasonable sample to judge him on but his Chelsea team had the same problem his Brighton team had. When he left us, the problem was solved almost immediately. Unfortunately for Chelsea, they didn't appoint a top manager to right the ship. They appointed a club ambassador. Maybe if we'd hired Bobby Zamora we'd have not been able to improve things but we didn't, we appointed a football genius.
But had he at least started to get there in the end?
| Arsenal FC | A | 2:1 (1:0) | W |
| Tottenham Hotspur | A | 1:0 (0:0) | W |
| Manchester City | A | 0:3 (0:0) | L |
| Southampton FC | H | 2:2 (2:1) | D |
| Wolverhampton Wanderers | A | 3:0 (1:0) | W |
| Manchester United | H | 4:0 (1:0) | W |
| Leeds United | A | 1:1 (1:0) | D |
| West Ham United | H | 3:1 (0:1) | W |
| Manchester United | A | 2:1 (2:0) | W |
| Newcastle United | H | 0:0 (0:0) | D |
| West Ham United | A | 2:0 (1:0) | W |
| Leeds United | H | 1:0 (0:0) | W |
| Fulham FC | A | 1:2 (0:0) | L |
| Leicester City | H | 5:2 (2:2) | W |
De Zerbi's first 15 games by comparison. Won 6, drawn 4, lost 5, goals scored 28, the problem wasn't solved "almost immediately!"
| Liverpool FC | A | 3:3 (2:1) | D |
| Tottenham Hotspur | H | 0:1 (0:1) | L |
| Brentford FC | A | 0:2 (0:1) | L |
| Nottingham Forest | H | 0:0 (0:0) | D |
| Manchester City | A | 1:3 (0:2) | L |
| Chelsea FC | H | 4:1 (3:0) | W |
| Wolverhampton Wanderers | A | 3:2 (2:2) | W |
| Aston Villa | H | 1:2 (1:1) | L |
| Southampton FC | A | 3:1 (2:0) | W |
| Arsenal FC | H | 2:4 (0:2) | L |
| Everton FC | A | 4:1 (1:0) | W |
| Liverpool FC | H | 3:0 (0:0) | W |
| Leicester City | A | 2:2 (1:1) | D |
| AFC Bournemouth | H | 1:0 (0:0) | W |
| Crystal Palace | A | 1:1 (0:0) | D |
Stopped clock, mate. I'm very rarely right about anything, but I'll happily take the glory hereI was just about to say that nobody could have named RDZ but then came across these posts from April 2019
Quite conceivably. Although would Potter have taken it? Probably not.
