Just how angry do we want Graham Potter to be? Stepped on an upturned plug angry? Just missed a train angry? Had his Subaru nicked and getting ghosted by his insurance company angry?
Potter’s tenure at Chelsea is a fascinating study in our expectations of managers and how much importance – if any – we place on honesty and integrity.
Throughout his impressive career he has been praised for being different – he has a degree in emotional intelligence. At Östersund he took his players to the ballet, made them write a book, put on a musical to raise money for refugees – while leading the side to back-to-back promotions and winning a cup.
You can hear the proper football men already: “Try getting Kai Havertz and Mason Mount to perform Joseph in front of an audience.” To be fair, they might have a point, although I would pay good money to watch. “The problem is there, Brian, he’s got a great chorus, Joseph’s brothers are all great – but how have they spent half a billion pounds and still there’s no one there to sing Any Dream Will Do in the encore?”
The idea of simply wanting it more, of chest-pumping, of yelling the loudest, of just generally being furious permeates every level of football. How alpha can you be? But does it actually make a difference? Are Chelsea struggling because Potter didn’t spit blood about that Tomas Soucek handball, or is it because his side aren’t putting their chances away and he’s struggling to get a lot of new signings to gel?
Potter was a little chippy before the Dortmund game. “If you think that you can start a coaching career in the ninth tier of English football and get to this point now with Chelsea in the Champions League without getting angry, or being nice, then I’d suggest you don’t know anything about anything.”
You don’t know anything about anything. Quite a claim when you strip it back – even my 11-month-old knows something about something; he can’t quite clap or point well enough yet to take an assistant manager’s job, but he’s not far off. And yet Potter carries himself with a calmness and honesty that not many other managers do – generous to his opposition, open about his team’s weaknesses. It’s a charge often aimed at Gareth Southgate – had he chinned the odd passerby perhaps Harry Kane would have scored that penalty.
As for being honest – managers lie all the time, from the moment they walk in the door. First press conference, express surprise at the fitness levels of the squad – as if they’d done no exercise in the previous three years. Before games, hype up the quality of the opposition, praise their gaffer to such a level that home to Bournemouth and Gary O’Neil feels like a trip to Galatasaray under a Pep/Sir Alex/Ancelotti clone. Five minutes after the final whistle blame the ref, the pitch, the ball, VAR, throw anything in your eyeline under the bus – take absolutely no responsibility.
Most of the time we just accept it, because frankly there’s not enough time to worry about it. We all know that what they say in the dressing room is likely to be markedly different.
And there are more important liars – swanning around high office in public life, deciding things that actually matter. It would be better for the world if George Santos was just making shit up about Port Vale’s away form.
Managers are of course speaking to different audiences at the same time – their own fans, their owners, the media. And most of us just want entertainment. Nathan Jones, the most aggressive man in Europe, talking about teaching PE in Abergavenny, Rafa Benítez talking about facts, José Mourinho reeling off all his achievements in a passive-aggressive – or just plain aggressive – way. And so Potter’s measured and humble approach doesn’t necessarily fit with what we all want.
The fact is that two wins in 14 isn’t good enough. And it is odd to see a Chelsea manager keeping his job given this record. The ice was always thin under Roman Abramovich, winning trophies often wasn’t enough. So clearly the match-going Chelsea fans must be finding this a little weird.
Can there be mitigating circumstances if you’ve spent so much money? You wonder whether Potter would have an easier time if there weren’t quite as many options for him. Training must be a nightmare – what possible drills can you do to work out which of your attacking players will get it right? Give yourself a whiteboard and try to work out Chelsea’s best XI. Perhaps that’s a “nice problem to have” – he’s paid a lot of money and it’s his job to work it out.
Would Potter be smarter to play the game? To bring a bit of faux outrage to proceedings to placate the pundits – some of whom are incredibly successful themselves at feigning fury about all manner of things. And it works, but blimey it must be tiring. What a funny world, where angry fans call up radio show hosts who are pretending to be angry about someone not being angry – who might inwardly be really angry but doesn’t feel it’s the right thing to project.
We are all amateur psychologists – so it might be worth listening to a professional one. Speaking to 5 Live, Sarah Murray, a sports psychologist, explained that “six months ago with a different club from a media perception he was fantastic, doing a great job, high in emotional intelligence, showing these things that perhaps we hadn’t seen from managers in the past – a new style, an understanding of the player beyond the badge. We fast-forward six months and suddenly he is vilified for not being aggressive enough and for maintaining a consistent and transparent narrative of who he is and not backing down on that. From a psychological point of view, it’s interesting to watch the response of the fans and the media to that – and fundamentally saying six months ago we need people with a human interest and now they need to be aggressive and win at all costs, and with that comes a human cost.”
And that is elite sport, it is results – and immediate results – above happiness and wellbeing. It’s an impossible balance, from the thousands of academy players let go to difficulties of a top player retiring into the unknown of their future unstructured life and every decision in between.
It is obvious to say that Potter needs results – then he can be as calm or as angry as he likes. He does have an appointment with Dr Tottenham at the weekend. Ask any Spurs fan: if ever there were a time for Chelsea’s aG (actual goals) to meet their xG, then the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday may not be the worst place to try to find it.
