Graham Potter will not be sacked if Chelsea fail to qualify for the Champions League
Graham Potter (Photo by Chloe Knott – Danehouse/Getty Images) © Getty Images
Chelsea’s new head coach Graham Potter will be given sufficient time to implement his strategy at Stamford Bridge, and his job won’t be under threat even if the ambitious Blues fail to qualify for the Champions League, according to reports in the UK media.
Ex-Brighton boss Potter, 47, was installed as the new Chelsea boss on Thursday – a day removed from Thomas Tuchel’s shock sacking by new owner Todd Boehly after the free-spending Premier League giants’ less than impressive start to the new campaign.
But while the previous Abramovich-led regime had an unspoken policy that a top four finish and qualification for the Champions League was the minimum expectation from a Chelsea head coach, the US-based Boehly – who fronted the consortium which purchased the club from Roman Abramovich in May – is understood to have asked Potter to oversee a culture change in Southwest London.
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Chelsea are currently sixth in the Premier League table, two places and three points behind fourth-placed Brighton and lost their first Champions League game of the season away to Dinamo Zagreb, in what proved to be Tuchel’s final game in charge – a match which came a little over year removed from when the German boss won Chelsea’s second-ever Champions League crown in Portugal against English rivals Manchester City.
Potter, though, is said to have been tasked with overseeing a culture change at Chelsea as part of Boehly’s long-term strategy to build a new era at the club – but in order to provide a foundation for success it is understood that Potter has been informed that barring a precipitous drop in form, his job will be safe regardless of where they finish in the Premier League at the end of the season.
Chelsea have finished outside the top four just twice in the past ten seasons. On both occasions, the manager (Jose Mourinho and Antonio Conte) was fired.
Reports indicate that Boehly sees a similarity between Potter and Andrew Friedman: the man hired by his LA Dodgers baseball team as its president of sporting operations in 2014, and it is thought that the new Chelsea hierarchy see similarities between him and Potter in their abilities to make the most of the assets available to them.
Friedman has previously excelled at the helm of one of baseball’s ‘lesser’ teams, the Tampa Bay Rays.
Potter, who inked a five-year contract with Chelsea, will likely also draw confidence from how Boehly and the Dodgers have stuck with their only managerial appointment to date, Dave Roberts, who was hired in 2015 and remains a firm fixture at the MLB franchise.
