Despite heading into just a fourth year of top flight football experience in England, Graham Potter's methods are well known and well-respected by his peers.
The new Chelsea boss has made a big impact on the Premier League since arriving from Swansea in 2019 and was top of Todd Boehly's list to replace Thomas Tuchel from day one. With a long-term project in mind and progression of the squad into a moulded template of sustained success at the forefront of the plans, Potter was the clear candidate.
His arrival poses a new question for Chelsea who have become a risk averse club, favouring experience and immediate winning over building a club designed to be more sustainable. Potter's gradual improvement at Brighton shows how far he can go if given the time.
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A testament of his quality and the impact he made at the Seagulls is the respect shown by new manager Roberto De Zerbi upon his arrival. Speaking in his first press-conference as Brighton head coach, the Italian said: "For me it's very easy to start working here in Brighton because I know the work that has been made by Potter before me.
"There are a lot of players very close to my idea of football, they have the right skills and they are the right characteristics especially mentally, to play my football and to play brave as I want.
"I'm not Potter. If we can keep this mentality and those principles [from Potter's reign] I will try to bring my idea much more clear without making any big changes."
De Zerbi's rise up the footballing world has been similar to Potter's in that he learnt his trade in the lower leagues of a European nation - De Zerbi spent seven years in Italy gaining promotion from Serie D and moved his way up to Serie A personally before leaving to join Shakhtar Donetsk last season.
His methods and exciting football are comparable to Potter's, which makes the template left by the new Chelsea boss even more appealing for the club, but it also shows the direction that the Blues themselves need to go in. Although no director of football has been appointed yet, streamlining the club to move forward together makes managerial movements easier to overcome.
Part of Potter's transition at Brighton was due to overseeing the change from Chris Hughton's pragmatic style to the modernised positional and tactically expansive style that attracted Chelsea to him. Brighton now, in theory, will have less of a transition to go through with De Zerbi as the thoughts and patterns of the new manager are aligned with that of Potter.
For too long at Chelsea managers have come in with fundamental differences in ideology to the one before. Brighton's own template left by Potter is one that needs to be given time to work at Stamford Bridge so that even if Potter isn't the man to be at Chelsea for five-years, his successor doesn't have to work from a blank canvas.
It was the approach taken at Manchester City who adopted ways of luring Pep Guardiola to the club far before his eventual appointment, therefore setting up the adaptation period nicely. The Spaniard is the pioneer and goal setter for top managers in the world and De Zerbi's own admiration, which is aligned with Potter's, demonstrates the journey Chelsea want to go on.
"I think Pep Guardiola's football is unreachable because he has shown such football in the UK and Germany and Spain," De Zerbi added.
"He [Guardiola] is very happy that I am on board here, he told me very good things about the club. He told me if I need he will be happy to help me, of course not in the match we are playing against them.
"Guardiola, I think, is the trainer of the strongest team of the last 40 years, Barcelona. We met each other when he was the manager of Bayern Munich. A couple of months ago I flew to Manchester to see him. He is a great trainer and we are all looking at him."
Chelsea's aim now is to create a platform for Potter to implement long-term ideas for growth throughout the club and, maybe, create his own Guardiola-style template at SW6. It is a paradigm shift to the methods used under previous ownership, but realistically it is the best way to move forward.
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