- Jul 6, 2011
- 2,427
"Any team can look great passing around outside of the opposition box." - This is obviously not true, very few teams pass the ball around as well as we do regardless of if that is Potter style ball retention or De Zerbi style ball retention and both styles were achieved by players coached by Potter before De Zerbi turned up. Do you seriously believe De Zerbi took a bunch of Palace level cloggers and created the current team with a bit of fairy dust and a week in Dubai?
"We really weren’t that great until a certain Ecuadorean came into the side." - So we weren't amazing to begin with under Potter but we were getting better and better before he left? Does that indicate a good manager or a bad one?
"Two homes wins in a calendar year eleven games without a win and our longest PL losing streak all came under Potter which gets conveniently forgotten about by some." - A team in transition from perennial relegation candidates goes through a bad spell, this is not enjoyable but not surprising and then we came out of the other side as a better team. Are you saying Alex Ferguson was a bad manager because Man Ure finished 11th in his 3rd season there? Selecting just a sample of data to back up an argument is deliberately trying to distort facts, just as bad as Potter fans who only talk about the wins.
"Yes we had a few good wins against the top six but then again most sides manage one or two of those." - Yes most sides manage one or two, is that all that we ever managed then? I think we could all name more than that and they weren't flukey Palarse level 1-0s. We went in to every game against the big 6 with at least a hint of optimism that we might get something out of them. Compare that with the infamously dull anti-football that we were reduced to in Hughton's last game against Spurs - we were desperately holding on for a draw from the first minute.
Where Potter really struggled with us was against the low block teams and this could be said to be the biggest challenge for De Zerbi too (although the signs are that he will do better).
Yeah sure, bang on about the frustrating low block struggles we had under Potter, his dreary interviews or his frikin annoying habit of sucking in air through his teeth but to try and use any of this as evidence he was somehow a terrible manager is just laughable. He was, no matter what you think of him as a person, the manager in charge when we came 9th in the premier league and the team that De Zerbi might just get us into Europe with was assembled and coached under that same manager. He was a very good and successful manager for us.
