Graham Potter had been rare since his ouster from Chelsea in April 2023. In an interview with Telegraphthe former coach of Brighton and Blues returned to the reasons for his failed stint on the bench of the London club. According to him, the busy schedule after the 2022 World Cup has had a big impact on the performance of his players. “ I take responsibility for the results. I never said I was perfect. We live and we learn. The easy solution is that when Chelsea don’t win, it’s the fault of the manager who has never worked at this level before. It may not be 100% wrong, but it’s not 100% right. It was almost the perfect storm. Before the World Cup, we had 14 matches in six weeks. It’s like you’re in a washing machine, that’s what we told ourselves internally. The matches kept coming and we had no preparation time or anything. We lost Reece James and Wesley Fofana to injury. I think we had the most players at the World Cup and, shortly after, we lost Raheem Sterling and Christian Pulisic. »
He also explains that the money spent by the owners increased the pressure on him. “ Then the owners decided to invest a lot of money in the team, £300m in the winter market. If you spend that much on players who are not from the Premier League, from countries that have a mid-season break, you can’t imagine that they are going to play and everything is going to be okay. But with so much money spent, the pressure on the team and the coach increases. And people are like, ‘You spent all this money.’ If we had spent it on Harry Kane and Declan Rice I would have agreed. It was a very difficult situation since I could only choose 11 players and not 20. If you find a coach who tells you: ‘Yes, this is the best thing for me’, I would be very surprised “, he revealed.
