Chelsea FC fired Graham Potter on Sunday following a dispiriting loss to newly high-flying Aston Villa.
I would not have fired Graham Potter. But I also would not have fired Mourinho Mach 1, Claudio Ranieri, Luis Felipe Scolari, Carlo Ancelotti, Antonio Conte, Frank Lampard, or Thomas Tuchel. So I depart from the narrative a lot here.
Of all of them however, the one that I understand the most has to be Graham Potter. In finance there’s a term called Career Risk. To simplify it the concept is:
If you’re going to make decisions to a certain degree you need to be within the logical realm of your peers. The amount that you depart from there becomes riskier should you fail and you need to explain yourself and your decisions to others to be hired again in your career moving forward.
Graham Potter’s starting 11 against Aston Villa was the sort of absurd career risk decision that was not only a wild decision on a professional basis but insulting to the support, staff, and ownership group for whom results matter so much.
The eleven was so far from what would have even qualified as logical that for a grouping of people not only in Todd Boehly and Clearlake Group but also the new front office for whom results are both financially but also professionally important that they were entirely in the right to feel insulted.
That compounded with the substitutions which only made the situation worse was a very difficult thing to stomach.
Too much has been invested in Chelsea FC financially and professionally by too many people for the manager to be making decisions as rash as playing two-thirds of the center backs out of position in a partnership that has never been played before.
That sort of thing is for an early FA Cup round or the Carabao Cup. Two competitions which Chelsea, under Potter, are no longer entrants in.
But in a match where Chelsea should be collecting points in a bid to at least move into some sort of European place to guarantee slight TV revenue and more matches for matchday revenue next season is a suicidal time to make such a decision. To do it purely for unnecessary experimentation made no sense.
The best and most consistent center-back he has had this season was available in Benoit Badiashile. A player whom it should be noted has displayed the beginning of a relationship with teammate Kalidou Koulibaly. The sort of relationship that generally stops a mistake like that between the aforementioned Senegalese player and his new teammate Marc Cucurella.
In the old words of Sir Alex Ferguson, “You do not change the back line”. The relationships between defenders are so important that chopping and changing them is considered a mistake in and of itself. To do it this often and without necessity begged questions that did not suit Potter to have answered.
For a team then struggling as much as Chelsea is to have played their literal best player, Reece James, out of position when they’re struggling for creativity up front was crazy. To do it while having Trevoh Chalobah a player who once held a personal unbeaten record and was noted for his consistency under former manager Thomas Tuchel was madness.
Then removing Mikhailo Mudryk, the only player who though he missed, looked to have a method towards creating clean-cut chances after only 60 or so minutes was wild.
How did he conceive of a reason to not bring on the highest-paid player at the club and also perhaps the only experienced goalscorer there in Raheem Sterling?
These are the questions that left people wondering and likely are what cost Potter his job.
When things were still redeemable though to not make decisions as a man who understood the greater scenario, as it was implied Potter was hired to do, then sealed this.
Graham Potter is a good manager and will likely have a great career.
The good news is being fired by Chelsea essentially means that you’re a great coach and is so common that it never really gets held against a manager in the long-term. His success in the future is the sort of stick that will be used to beat Chelsea in the future. It will be the same stick that was used with Conte, Mourinho, Ancelotti, and soon-to-be Thomas Tuchel I assume.
So would I have done this?
No, no I wouldn’t have. But of all the firings of note this one I at least understood.
The issue here though is now Boehly and Co will have an even harder job trying to prove that they’re not incredibly impulsive and hot-headed in the way that they were claiming not to be. They’re also likely getting a first-degree course in how football is unlike any other sport and that stats though fun and cute to look at are not as telling in football as say another sport like…baseball.
America’s pastime in many ways is a collection of individual competitions. The pitcher vs the hitter, the fielder vs the hitter, and so on. A few times per game genuine chemistry and work together are required to create a greater opportunity but not too often. You can to a certain degree simply collect statistics which is one of the reasons why the game is so popular with American finance types and the mathematics genius’ some genuinely are but all believe themselves to be.
But as Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics have found and more recently Boehly’s Dodgers that will only guarantee you a certain level of success but the magic needed to win championships it does not.
The Dodgers, for example, have despite spending more highly than even the New York Yankees over the past 10 years have won many trips to the playoffs but only one World Series and it is one that people discount from the circumstances around COVID.
Football statistics simply aren’t a perfect system and though some are relevant there’s no way to measure the magic of football and the new ownership group will have to accept that.
They’re going to have to hope this new dream team of recruitment and technical professionals makes the right call with the next manager because this is now a very painfully important decision. Potter was in all fairness hired long before they were and so it would make sense that there was a little discomfort around the camp about that.
This next decision will go a long way towards deciding whether or not this Chelsea rebuild is going to be immediate or if it is going to be a 3-5 year plan and let’s face it we all know which one of those is acceptable to the Blues.
Chelsea felt that though they invested a lot in Graham Potter to protect their greater investment in Chelsea Football Club a move needed to be made. What they’ll do to follow that I truly couldn’t tell you.
Next week I will name a few managers that I think are worthwhile for Chelsea to consider. A few shocks and a few obvious ones.
As of now though a man and his young family have moved homes and unsettled their lives, though I acknowledge with a great financial benefit, only to have them completely turned upside down and it feels rude not to let them breathe.
What an unbelievable mess this seems to be at the moment. Graham Potter should have been given more time but the decision not to afford it to him makes sense. I can’t help but think at least some consistency around the training ground before necessary matches against Liverpool, Wolves and Real Madrid in 10 whole days total would have been useful. If Chelsea loses all three then this is a true unmitigated disaster and they could have just limped home.
How this makes Chelsea better for Real Madrid I don’t know but then at the same time it is also only the Blues whose reputation for madness is so closely aligned with genius that even they don’t know the difference among the European giants. The Blues have never won a Champions League without first firing a manager, so food for thought or as I like to say brain cake there.
At least CFC is never boring but I have to admit this routine is a little tiring.