Chelsea and Graham Potter need signings, support and patience to make project work
With Chelsea enduring a poor run of results under Graham Potter, we highlight why his project - even more than most - needs both time and money before it can be judged.
- Published prior to Chelsea's signing of Joao Felix and 2-1 defeat by Fulham
Impatience is a sin that football’s relentless news cycle has bred in all of us but nowhere does it fester more than at Chelsea, whose previous owner did more than anyone to create the modern culture of instant fixes.
Roman Abramovich’s ruthless short-termism defied the perceived wisdom of stability. Every campaign seemed to end in silverware despite cut-throat dismissals and wild lurches in direction, changing the landscape of English football in the 21st century.
His successor Todd Boehly has promised a more measured approach. But words are cheap. Eventually, the financially volatile world of football drags every well-intentioned billionaire down to Abramovich’s level of restlessness. Graham Potter, a measured tactician who requires more time than most for his ideas to take hold, will be acutely aware of this.
Positives in defeat for Potter
A manager of his tactical dexterity and unique approach to the fine-tuned details of the game demands our patience – and that of his players. The Chelsea staff will come away from training sessions with headaches most days, and they will begin to tire unless the fruits of their labour begin to show. Fortunately, even in defeat the positives can show, as they did in Thursday evening’s 1-0 loss to Manchester City.
There aren’t many aspects of the Potter system that can be explained in a few sentences, but suffice to say he expects possession and territorial domination, won through a mix of perfect choreography in both the counter-press and on-the-ball positional structure.
Like Pep Guardiola, Potter coaches precisely where to stand and how and when to pass, creating set moves that become muscle memory as the players build relationships, providing scaffolding for beautiful one-touch football that prioritises verticality and ball progression over passing from side to side.
All of that was on show, in flashes, against Man City, who were pushed back throughout the first half thanks to the brilliant press-evading work of Denis Zakaria and Matteo Kovacic (channeling Moises Caicedo, Yves Bissouma and Enock Mwepu vibes) in the middle of the park.
But bluntness in the final third prevented Chelsea from capitalising before a string of second-half changes from Guardiola wrestled the match away from the hosts, and by the end the Chelsea team was littered with scrappy but overwrought academy products.
It will take time – a lot of it – before that first half is replicated over 90 minutes and with regularity. Brighton won just two of their first nine matches under Potter and that was after a full pre-season and transfer window with him at the helm.
The new Chelsea manager has had neither of those things, with the latter just as important as the former. It is telling that throughout their much-publicised run of one win in eight Potter has on average made 4.5 changes to his starting line-up between matches.
New signings a must for Chelsea
Rotation is part of the Potter plan and to some extent the changes reflect his desire to get the whole squad involved in the revolution, but the use of so many youngsters against Man City told a clear story. He needs new signings this month and in the summer before we can really see what a Potter Chelsea will look like.
The current Chelsea squad is a mess, particularly in the final third. Raheem Sterling is an excellent addition and will excel as one of Potter’s ultra-attacking wing-backs, as Leandro Trossard has at Brighton, but almost no other part works.
Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang is a one-dimensional number nine ill-fitting to contemporary tactics, while Kai Havertz’s pathological inability to operate anywhere near the penalty area makes him the opposite extreme and equally disappointing.
Christian Pulisic and Hakim Ziyech are good players but clearly nowhere near title-challenging level and – that’s it. The list of Chelsea attackers ends there. It is no wonder they have scored just 10 goals in 11 Premier League matches under Potter, or that their 21.3 xG is the seventh worst in the division, according to Infogol.
Financing moves for elite forwards is an urgent priority and we cannot expect too much from Potter until they finally replace the losses of Eden Hazard and Romelu Lukaku; until they recover from the gradual brain drain of the last few years.
Nevertheless there have been other signs of Potter’s vision beginning to show, of automatisms stuttering into life much in the way the awkward early months of Mikel Arteta at Arsenal contained hallmarks of brighter days to come despite him winning just one of his first eight Premier League matches in charge.
Injuries have hindered Potter hugely
The brilliance of Zakaria on Thursday evening was the highlight, although we have also seen intriguing displays from Ruben Loftus-Cheek in a hybrid wing-back/midfield role.
If that feels a little thin for three-and-a-half months in the job, then it should be acknowledged Chelsea have suffered injuries like nobody else.
N’Golo Kante has been restricted to just two league starts, Reece James seven, Ben Chilwell four, and Wesley Fofana two. Everybody knows how important Chelsea’s wing-backs are in their 3-4-3, whether under Thomas Tuchel or Potter, and it is hardly surprising that without them Chelsea’s already under-stocked attack looks lifeless.
The seamless speed of Boehly’s takeover last summer has given the illusion of continuity at Chelsea – and maintained the illusion that the same-old Chelsea will surge to the title sometime soon.
But in reality the club are in the midst of a major transitional period defined by a scattergun transfer policy and a six-year Premier League dry spell that threatens to sink Chelsea into the second tier of the ‘Big Six’; a limbo in which Tottenham Hotspur appear to be trapped indefinitely.
It is a club in desperate need of a cultural reset and a tactical rebrand. In Potter, Boehly has hired just the person to move on from the boom-and-bust Abramovich years and create a more measured and contemporary Premier League club. All he has to do is keep the money flowing in, and – the hardest part of all – be patient.