[Football] Potter [NOT] at Chelsea

[Bold Seagull]

On that point, I don't think we had scored for 7 games and had just been stuffed at home to Burnley. I think I'm right in saying that the introduction of Caciedo was partially forced. Moder did his ACL which generated a space and then we flew. Whether he'd have played if Moder doesn't get injured we will never know but we sort of stumbled across our best team.

Whilst I don't subscribe to some of the stuff written re Potter, it does highlight that football management has an element of luck about it. He certainly isn't getting any at Chelsea which we can all agree is highly amusing to watch.

True, and perhaps we don’t have that run of Dunk doesn’t get sent off at OT and misses the Burnley game, Maupay doesn’t miss a pen home to Norwich etc. Overall we were great for most of the season, terms like ‘downward spiral’ is just a bit ludicrous.

Agree with you though, far too much is placed on managers, whether players finding goalscoring form and belief, defensive strength and cutting out errors, some of it is just the players collectively clicking at the same time.

 

[Guinness Boy]

They were.

No they weren't. One successful season here, two bang average. One very average season at Swansea. And I reckon Dyche could get a lot of success in the Swedish lower leagues.

 

[One Teddy Maybank]

Swansea season: no one in their right mind thought Swansea could come 10th, in fact after the transfer window closed many Swansea fans thought they'd do a Sunderland and finish in the bottom and get relegated. So, minimum expectation according to who exactly?

Brighton season 1: you tell me what the team looked like in CHs final six months... GP gets the job with the mission to keep the team up, change team the style of football and make use of the academy. Plenty of pundits and people here thinks the team will get relegated: it doesn't.

Brighton season 2: ambition is to get closer to the top 10, continue developing the style of play, continue to introduce academy players. While the points tally isn't much better than in season 1, the performances certainly are on an entirely different level, and by nearly every metric - aside from putting the f***ing ball in the net - Brighton is a top 6 team performing at a level that has not been repeated before or after. Despite the miniscule improvement in regards of points, the team has taken very far steps forward

Brighton season 3: the aim is top 10, TB says before the season. Style of play is already good enough going into the season, as is the youth development. However, despite decent results, the quality of football is poor until December and it looks worrying, but additional edge is added when Alexis has bulked up by January. Some poor/very poor results follow in February/March but by the end of the season, quality of football is top notch, targeted league position is reached and development of youths keeps progressing

Four seasons in football, reaching and sometimes exceeding the aims aside from two aspects (points/position in Brighton s2, and quality of football for a number of months in s3). Perfect? No. But far better than most other managers who on average fail to reach ANY of their clubs ambitions and get sacked within 2 years.

All of this in sometimes dire/poor conditions (dire: Swansea season with like 10 proven first team players, Brighton season 1 with a slightly boosted team compared to the one that had done f*** all of use in the Pl for 6 months, poor: Brighton season 2 when covid had ripped the economy apart and prevented the club from really being able to rebuild).

Quite fair.

I think the biggest compliment any of us can (and should pay GP,), is that he changed the playing style completely of a PL club, which is not an easy thing to do. Despite the woeful home form he did a good job. (I also didn’t mind Hughton and he gave the club PL foundations).

Credit Bloom and Barber for giving him time, but he does need it, which is why the jump to Chelsea was madness.

However, he isn’t very personable really based on press conferences and despite his degree, apparently struggles at times to take ALL fans with him on the ‘journey’. I think he’ll end up at West Ham and do well…..

Good manager but a bit of a tw@t……

 

[dwayne]

How did you conclude we had the 9th best squad? Cucurella hadn’t played in the PL, MacA just finding his feet, Mwepu unknown, Caicedo was out on loan, we still had Duffy as defensive cover, Maupay up front, Gross apperantly too old for many people (happy to check past Gross threads for you), Dan Burn who couldn’t play left back - where’s this 9th best squad come from?

What is it this season then? What target has RDZ got, given he was handed a team in 4th - is 9th just ordinary par for the manager again, 8th maybe, is top 7 the only real successful measure?

Burn is playing for a top 4 team now.
Cucu was a world record fee for a fullback ?
Maccer and caciedo are two of the best young centre mids in the world.

And so on ...

With the current squad (selling no one) I would say de zerbi should be looking at 8th upwards.

But if he achieves 10th upwards scoring the number of goals the team do now and making us one of the most exciting teams in the world (as we are now!) Then I would be very happy.

 

[Zeberdi]

Remember the Potter Out votes? These are just people who wanted him gone, then he won games on the bounce and we were flying and they’re like we’re sorry he’s brilliant, and now he’s left they’re like we were right the whole time booo. Hilarious really, objectivity not a word that comes into it.

Think that’s probably largely true of fans’ relationship with their team’s head coach regardless of which club or manager we’re talking about - when the team is on a winning streak or at least on an upward trajectory, they’ve got the best manager since sliced bread and fans love him but if form drops significantly or they’re simply making no progress when they were previously, it’s ‘off with his head! Some owners give managers more time than others, and most owners give managers more time than disgruntled fans do, especially if there’s an understanding that the whole system needs to change (as it did after Hughton) but they all get kicked out in the end if the team has nosedived with little immediate sign of recovery though don’t they?

 

[Bold Seagull]

No they weren't. One successful season here, two bang average. One very average season at Swansea. And I reckon Dyche could get a lot of success in the Swedish lower leagues.

Panto season is over GB. Just because you keep repeating something doesn’t make it true.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Burn is playing for a top 4 team now.
Cucu was a world record fee for a fullback ?
Maccer and caciedo are two of the best young centre mids in the world.

And so on ...

With the current squad (selling no one) I would say de zerbi should be looking at 8th upwards.

But if he achieves 10th upwards scoring the number of goals the team do now and making us one of the most exciting teams in the world (as we are now!) Then I would be very happy.

Also, you would think on paper that Chelsea has a better squad than us, yet everyone defending Potter's start there has blamed the players and said what an awful squad they have. That's Chelsea. In the knockout stages of the Champions League.

Look at some of the squads behind us. Forest have spent money because they had to as their Championship team were all loans but their squad is far weaker. Villa pay more than us but how many Villa players would get in our squad? Ings and McGinn maybe (and the former would only stunt Ferguson's development). Bournemouth have one of the worst squads ever to take on the EPL. Southampton and Leicester have massively regressed, player wise. Wolves have no one who can score. Palace have no depth. And so on.

 

[Mo Gosfield]

There is no way he wasn't tapped up b4 the approach became official. It was months in the making and Chelski were just waiting for the right time to ditch Tuchel. Probably if the truth ever came out the same could be said about the backroom staff as well.

Of course he was. The speed at which the whole team moved immediately in the aftermath of Tuchel's departure meant only one thing. All contracts had been drafted already. All due diligence completed already. All domestic situations sorted. Schooling arranged. Everything in place bar the photoshoot signatures on paper. That is all that remained.
It is widely believed that Potter's agent started talking to Boehly, when negotiations were taking place re Nathan Ake. This was in early to mid July. So it is quite possible that Potter and his team were in discussions for at least six weeks before the actual move.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Panto season is over GB. Just because you keep repeating something doesn’t make it true.

Stop saying it then.

16th and 40 ish points isn't highly successful. It's par at best.

 

[Swansman]

Burn is playing for a top 4 team now.
Cucu was a world record fee for a fullback ?
Maccer and caciedo are two of the best young centre mids in the world.

And so on ...

With the current squad (selling no one) I would say de zerbi should be looking at 8th upwards.

But if he achieves 10th upwards scoring the number of goals the team do now and making us one of the most exciting teams in the world (as we are now!) Then I would be very happy.

Who says any of these players would have reached this level without the "culture of improvement" multiple players as well TB and PB said GP created?
Alexis and Trossard both said multiple times they weren't really ready for PL when they came to the club. Caicedo said it once.

 

[Bold Seagull]

Burn is playing for a top 4 team now.
Cucu was a world record fee for a fullback ?
Maccer and caciedo are two of the best young centre mids in the world.

And so on ...

With the current squad (selling no one) I would say de zerbi should be looking at 8th upwards.

But if he achieves 10th upwards scoring the number of goals the team do now and making us one of the most exciting teams in the world (as we are now!) Then I would be very happy.

Sorry, surely you assess where you think you should be at the start of a season not at the end?

Cucu started the season an unknown from Spain. Burn started the season with threads calling him rubbish and saying he shouldn’t be anywhere near the team. Remember he was sold in Jan right? Our only poor patch was for a few games after he went. MacA wasn’t starting at the start of that season and was by no means everyone’s starting player.

Sure, by the end of the season it’s fantastic, MacA and Caicedo, Cucu sold etc. you don’t revise your expectation backwards though and say we had the 9th best squad. We did by the end by didn’t start that way.

 

[beorhthelm]

lot of talk about revisionism and the start to the season here. lets get back to the fact that, with a supposedly better squad, Potter is doing worse at Chelsea. supposed to have been about the man-managment, building up players mental strength yet they have been appalling at handling games. maybe thats because of player egos etc, doesnt change that he's taken them backward. perhaps the strengths and style of Potter works better with average players, getting more out of them, and fails to translate to those more established.

 

[Swansman]

No they weren't. One successful season here, two bang average. One very average season at Swansea. And I reckon Dyche could get a lot of success in the Swedish lower leagues.

Can you understand why some people are struggling to take things that you say seriously when you're always adapting your opinion to whatever direction the wind is currently blowing? I think that somewhere deep inside you might just, with very small margins, have enough self-awareness to understand that this is what you're very frequently doing when it comes to a lot of topics.

 

[West Upper Seagull]

It’s this kind of subjective memory thing that keeps this discussion rolling. Last season we were 4th after 8 games. By the 12th Feb we were still 9th. The ‘downward spiral’ was a run of 6 games that included 5 straight defeats, including some strong opposition that saw us visit Arsenal in 13th still.

You could look at your last day scenario and say if Maupay didn’t miss a tap at Norwich, if Dunk hadn’t got sent off at OT,
then we’d have been 8th or better.

Last match points will always decide your final league position. Suddenly it’s luck we smashed West Ham and finished 9th.

I’m starting to feel like we’re in the Marvel Multiverse!

You have your opinion and I have mine, nothing wrong with that. It’s amusing to see your reaction to every comment on here that disagrees with you though - you’re trying to shoot down a lot of peoples opinions on this subject

 

[Icy Gull]

lot of talk about revisionism and the start to the season here. lets get back to the fact that, with a supposedly better squad, Potter is doing worse at Chelsea. supposed to have been about the man-managment, building up players mental strength yet they have been appalling at handling games. maybe thats because of player egos etc, doesnt change that he's taken them backward. perhaps the strengths and style of Potter works better with average players, getting more out of them, and fails to translate to those more established.

Been saying this since the day he left, I don’t think he is a manager who can deal with and get respect from Superstar players with massive egos. Not a big enough character and has won nothing yet so easily dismissed and ignored by Prima donnas, we’ll see though…maybe.

Takes nothing away from his ability as a manager though with level headed and hard working players, he is excellent.

 

[Iggle Piggle]

That Swansea team had Martin Olsson (Swedish International), Joe Rodon (made spurs), an admiteddly largely injured Wilfred Bony, Nathan Dyer (part of Leicesters PL winning squad and a prime Dan James. It wasn't a world beating squad by any means (Mike van der hoorn anyone?) but it wasn't Andy Ansah and Richard Tiltman either.

 

[Cheeky Monkey]

Ostersunds beat Arsenal at the Emirates under GP in 2018. No mean feat at all.

 

[Bold Seagull]

You have your opinion and I have mine, nothing wrong with that. It’s amusing to see your reaction to every comment on here that disagrees with you though - you’re trying to shoot down a lot of peoples opinions on this subject

Yeah funny that, a public football forum for discussing opinions. Not shooting down that many opinions though, just the wrong ones.

 

[Guinness Boy]

Can you understand why some people are struggling to take things that you say seriously when you're always adapting your opinion to whatever direction the wind is currently blowing? I think that somewhere deep inside you might just, with very small margins, have enough self-awareness to understand that this is what you're very frequently doing when it comes to a lot of topics.

"If you never change your mind, why have one?" - Edward De Bono

You, however, will remain convinced by conspiracy theories and the cult of Potter for the whole of your life, while calling other people sheep.

 

[raymondo]

I agree, especially after this latest ongoing shopping spree, gathering Europe’s best.

Nsc is going to really hate The Chavs next summer. A Merseyside journalist is reporting that Caicedo will ultimately join Chelsea.

I shall hope that Caicedo () and his agent () have more sense than that, but...