Chelsea were on the wrong side of major penalty decision late into their Premier League clash against West Ham just over 10 days ago. With the game finely poised at 1-1, Conor Gallagher's goal-bound shot was blocked by the arm of Tomas Soucek, but no spot kick was awarded and the game ended all square.
The incident caused a lot of debate at the time and on social media with many furious a penalty was not given, however Graham Potter opted for a different approach. When was asked if he thought it was a handball, the Blues head coach said: "Looks it [obvious], but these are the little things that you need to go in your favour and at the moment they’re not. That’s life, nothing to complain about there, it’s just we have to keep working."
Potter's verdict on the decision seem to cause more uproar than the actual incident itself with Rio Ferdinand and Joe Cole particularly critical of how he handled the situation.
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Ferdinand told BT Sport: "You look at a Jurgen Klopp or a Pep Guardiola or [Jose] Mourinho in years gone by at Chelsea, Mourinho would have been at it in that presser today and it would have been the story of tomorrow.
"The back page would have been ‘Mourinho slams VAR,’ and it takes the gloss off what happened on the pitch. You can negate that by controlling the narrative from that presser there."
Cole added: "I’m not surprised because he’s always diplomatic, he’s going a fantastic job, but I think if he had someone in his staff who’s maybe been at that level, managed at that level, you need to cause a bit of an uproar because It takes the deflection from the bad elements of your performance, and it also puts it on VAR.
"It cost Chelsea a chance to win the game there, through no fault of their own. You can dissect the performance of the team Monday morning, go through it and build on that, but if I was advising him now I’d say 'look, come out and make a thing of it.'"
Despite the criticism, Potter responded emphatically in his next press conference: "If you think that you can start a coaching career in the ninth tier of English football – the Northern Counties Division One – and get to this point, Chelsea and the Champions League, without sometimes getting angry or being nice, then I would suggest you don’t know anything about anything."
With more time to ponder on his opinion of the situation, Cole has since explained in his Telegraph column that he was wrong to suggest Potter should have tried to change the narrative coming out of the game. Cole wrote: "When Tomas Soucek was not penalised for his handball against Chelsea the weekend before last, I asked the question on television why Graham Potter had not gone on the attack with the referee, VAR - the whole thing - as we have seen managers do so many times before.
"It nagged away at me over the next few days. Had I got that right? Or was I just following the usual managerial playbook of trying to turn the screw on officials? Then, when Potter was asked about his reaction the following week, he said that it was just not how he wanted to behave. He was not going to change just because results were not going his way.
"That caught my attention. I admired it – and I wondered about my own reaction. If you asked me most days of the week, I would say I believed that for the game to thrive we have to treat the referee with respect – even when we don’t like the decision. On BT Sport we have messages in the commercial breaks about treating the officials in the right way. So why do we abandon them when a big decision goes against us?
"Potter has shown he has some principles when it comes to referees – and it is easy to do that when you are winning. But the real test of how firmly you believe in them comes when things are going badly."
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