The big question for Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali, who head up the Clearlake Consortium as the club’s co-owners, is whether to look for a long-term ‘project’ manager, which is what Potter was meant to be, or go down the ‘big-name, quick-fix’ route.
They took over from Roman Abramovich last May with lofty ambitions to change Chelsea’s history of hiring and firing managers regularly, to no longer pay inflated prices for mediocre players and to widen the pathway from youth academy to first team.
Ten months later, having spent over £600 million on a squad that is sitting in the bottom half of the Premier League, and with little or no new talent coming through, Boehly and Eghbali are looking for their third manager of the season, having sacked Thomas Tuchel last September and Graham Potter last night.
They had repeatedly stressed that they saw Potter as the man for their long-term plan to take Chelsea back to the top of English and European football, even admitting they were aiming to copy the way Arsenal had stuck by Mikel Arteta after the Spaniard finished eighth, eighth and fifth in his first three seasons.
A noble sentiment, but in football, results are everything and Saturday’s home defeat by Aston Villa was clearly the last straw. At around 8pm on Saturday evening, in the Stamford Bridge press room, Potter was still talking about preparing for the visit of Liverpool on Tuesday and vowing to work harder than ever to turn things around.
Barely 24 hours later he was gone, the latest victim of the club’s revolving door approach to recruiting managers, and the speculation is now all about who takes his place.
There is no shortage of candidates, with plenty of elite level managers out of work. Julian Nagelsmann is perhaps the most high profile, after his rapid rise to the top of German football was abruptly halted last week when Bayern Munich sacked him – and installed Tuchel instead.
Mauricio Pochettino is another man who is currently available, as is Luis Enrique and now Brendan Rodgers, the former Chelsea coach who sacked by Leicester City yesterday.
For the time being, Bruno Saltor, one of Potter’s coaches, will take charge of the team as Interim Head Coach for the visit of Liverpool on Tuesday, and a club statement last night added: “Along with our incredible fans, we will all be getting behind Bruno and the team as we focus on the rest of the season.
“We have 10 Premier League games remaining and a Champions League quarter final ahead. We will put every effort and commitment into every one of those games so that we can end the season on a high.”
Potter had said on Saturday that he had no complaints about the effort and commitment his players had put in against Aston Villa – but the damning truth is that they were simply not good enough to beat another mid-table side.
A goal in each half, from Oliie Watkins and John McGinn, sent Chelsea tumbling to their tenth league defeat of the season and effectively end any lingering hopes of a top-four finish.
They were booed off at half-time and full-time, and Potter faced more calls to quit from home supporters, as well as the inevitable chants of “You’re getting sacked in the morning” from gleeful Villa fans. They were not far wrong.
But while Potter must carry the can for poor performances, he is not responsible for a woeful recruitment policy. Five of the 11 that started against Villa were signed by the new owners. Marc Cucurella, Kalidou Koulibaly, Mykhailo Mudryk and others have yet to impress, and one of Chelsea’s biggest problems is that the squad is too big, unbalanced and unwieldy.
Whoever takes over as the next permanent manager, whether in the next week or the summer, has a huge task on his hands. Chelsea are 11th in the Premier League, which is not a false position for a team that has lost as many games as they have won.
Potter has the joint lowest points per game return in their Premier League history, with an average of 1.27 points per game, and although he led them into the quarter-finals of the Champions League, he was clearly not trusted with the task of trying to beat Real Madrid over two legs.
The managerial situation is complicated by the fact that the Spanish giants are also looking to replace Carlo Ancelotti, who is set to leave this summer, and Spurs want to replace Antonio Conte, another former Chelsea manager sacked in the past week.
Just over two years ago, Abramovich moved quickly to sack Frank Lampard and appoint Tuchel when the German became available following his exit from Paris St Germain, with Tottenham also considering a move. Now the same situation could be played out with either Nagelsmann or Pochettino in the Tuchel role.
Boehly and Eghbali want to make Chelsea the dominant club not just in England but in Europe too.
First they need to find the right manager to turn things around.
