Graham Potter MUST do these things fast to help Chelsea’s season

In this article I am going to look at the things that are in/on Graham Potters to do tray / to do list as he enters the Chelsea world as manager of the club. Note : there is many things that Potter needs to do and rectify following Chelsea’s rocky start to the season and all of my points mentioned in this article are completely my own opinion.

1) Identify stable system & start to produce attacking patterns

We know that Graham potter is an extremely tactical manager and often sets up with a 3 at the back with tweaks in game often leading to his teams playing a 4 at the back, in whatever formation Potter plays, his teams at Brighton and before have always played aggressive attacking football with an emphasis on inviting the opposition press onto the team and playing out of it to start attacks, his teams produce impressive passing patterns and every player has his role and more important, has to be good technically.

In the first few weeks and months, despite respecting Potter’s tactical versatility, I feel like he needs to build a foundation again at Chelsea, less defensive than Tuchel but certainly include a hint of pragmatism and be hard to beat whilst combining better passing and attacking patterns to produce more clear cut chances, there certainly also needs to be more players in the box as that was a big question mark of Tuchel’s.

A stable idea drilled into the players will help Chelsea get the results they need in the next few weeks and months. Unfortunately, Potter arrives during the season and hasn’t got much time to prepare the team playing the way I’m sure he would like to be seeing them play in a year or so’s time. It will be interesting to see what he does.

2) Find the core group of warriors

Every manager who arrives at a club will inevitably rate some players more than others and I feel like it’s important for Graham to find his core group of players or “Warriors” as I like to call them. These are the main 4-5 players who will buy into his idea’s and adapt to his methods very fast in training and therefore earn a starting place and likely be known as the dependables.

Under Tuchel, his core group initially included Antonio Rudiger, Reece James, Mason Mount, Kai Havertz and N’Golo Kante.

I’m intrigued to see just how many Chelsea players he can get on board and behind him, you’d like to think everyone will be given a fresh start so initially there should be no issues but the few players that don’t start as much as they’d like going forward, need to be kept as happy as possible to avoid group unsettlement, a common feature that seems to happen at Chelsea as time goes on with a manager, sometimes as little as a year into the job.

With Potter, Boehly has hired a manager with amazing man management skills, Potter boasts a masters in emotional intelligence and players who have played under him, starter or not, seem to love working for him day to day. I’m intrigued to see how potter puts these skills to test at a much bigger club with much bigger characters than he’s had to deal with so far in his career. We’ve seen just how much of a threat Chelsea can be under several managers, recently Thomas Tuchel, when the whole team is together and playing for the manager, over the course of our history, these situations have resulted in 2 champions leagues and many trophies.

3) Get the match-going fans on side

I know some of you will read this and probably say “Give over, they’ll support the team no matter what” which is true, but as a season ticket holder myself for 10+ years, I’ve had the first hand experience of going through different emotions with different managers and Thomas Tuchel seems like recently my undoing. I got emotionally attached to him, his demeanour on the sideline, his touchline scraps, celebrations and claps to the fans are the little things beyond the teams performance on the pitch that make you feel extra connected to the football club.

Many fans are going to be hurting over the loss of Thomas Tuchel and many will feel the situation of him being sacked was brewing for a while. Either way, don’t underestimate just how much a bit of passion from the manager gets recognised. It increases the atmosphere and makes you feel like one whole unit together, it makes you feel like you aren’t just there to watch the game and then leave, you are there to get involved and feel apart of that team as much as possible.

Take it back to the days of Maurizio Sarri, we played some good football but the fans never felt emotionally invested under him, they felt like Sarri was just an employee and didn’t really care about a connection with the fans, he rarely clapped away support who frequently spend hundreds of pounds travelling the country and he rarely ever clapped the home support either and made it feel like an environment to be reckoned with.

This whole point is totally subjective and people have different opinions but personally I often find those who say it doesn’t matter whether a manager is passionate or not are the ones that don’t go to matches live in person which is fine, not everyone can attend and Chelsea have amazing support all over the world but if you ever get a chance to go to the game and we are under a manager who is like Thomas Tuchel, Antonio Conte or Jose Mourinho, then you’ll really feel what I mean. I really hope Potter builds that connection with the fans.

4) Fix Set Pieces

Chelsea have been absolutely dreadful this season defending set pieces and going back to the point of me being at games, I’ve felt like every time we concede a corner there’s a 80%+ chance it’s going to be a goal, Mendy is not the commander he once was, and the Chelsea players frequently seem at complete confusion as to who they should mark.

So, who’s to blame? You’d have to mainly point to coach Anthony Barry who Chelsea insiders are thought to rate heavily but he did at-least control the set pieces under Thomas Tuchel, it has not yet been confirmed if he will stay on in his role or if he will leave. Potter has already brought with him multiple staff members and coaches with him.

5) Find the role for Aubameyang

Going back to the point of coaching attacking patterns and patterns on the pitch in general, Chelsea have a supreme premier league marksman upfront in Pierre Emerick Aubameyang. Albeit he is now 33, there is no doubt in my mind that Pierre can be an integral piece in Potter’s project in the next 12 months.

Potter needs to find a way to get those goals out of Aubameyang, he has proven he can do it at Arsenal, he is a former golden boot winner, if Chelsea can create consistent chances, they could be well within a shout at a solid premier league finish spot and trophies with Aubameyang at the top of the pitch.

It’s thought that amongst the change in stories from initially all of the summer signings Chelsea made being Tuchel’s picks to in actual fact them being club signings based on data, Aubameyang was one that was delivered for Tuchel specifically.

ChelseaFC365 understands however after discussions with a senior Chelsea source, Aubameyang did not join specifically because of Thomas Tuchel, so it’s up to Graham Potter to manage him on the pitch and off it, again, his man management skills and emotional intelligence masters is likely to be tested at some point in the next months with Aubameyang a player that can have the tendency to show up late to training or meetings.

These are my 5 picks for what Graham Potter needs to focus on in the immediate future at Chelsea as he enters his biggest challenge of his career, it’s sure to be a fun, bumpy, and likely chaotic ride as Chelsea enter a new era, dubbed by me at-least as “Potters Project”.