Football: Potter confident of support from Chelsea owners despite slump
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Chelsea manager Graham Potter believes he has the backing of the club owners and players after winning one Premier League game.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
LONDON – Graham Potter insisted that he has the “full support” of Chelsea’s owners and players as he tries to turn around the club’s fortunes after a disappointing start to his tenure.
The Blues have won just one of their past eight Premier League games, slipping to a 1-0 home loss to Manchester City
Their poor form meant that they are languishing in 10th in the English top flight, 10 points behind fourth-placed Manchester United in the battle for the Champions League spots.
Speculation is growing over the future of Potter, the former Brighton boss who took over at Chelsea in September, but he was adamant he did not need validation from anybody outside the club.
“The owners are billionaires so they’re quite smart,” said the Englishman, 47. “Smarter than me, that’s for sure. So they understand the challenges we have and the direction we want to go in.
“I’ve been here four months and five, six weeks of that have been lost to international football.
“Pep (Guardiola) was (at Manchester City) a year before they’d won anything, and then obviously Mikel (Arteta) and Jurgen (Klopp) took a bit of time.
“But it’s maybe different for me, for some reason. But I don’t put a timescale on it. I know the responsibility we have here.
“But also I know that I am capable and I have the full support of certainly the owners, the players and the staff here.”
Chelsea go head-to-head with City again on Sunday, this time at the Etihad in the FA Cup third round. Raheem Sterling and Christian Pulisic were both forced off the pitch on Thursday, adding to an injury nightmare which Potter described as something he has never experienced.
The pair could join a growing list that includes N’Golo Kante, Reece James, Wesley Fofana, Mason Mount, Ben Chilwell, Armando Broja, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Edouard Mendy.
Potter also said it was unfair to judge him on a season disrupted by an injury crisis and the World Cup, saying “there’s some challenges that we face, there’s some margins in the Premier League that are difficult”. “We’ve had a massive transition – problems in terms of injuries don’t make it easy to be stable,” he added.
New signing Benoit Badiashile backed his boss and said: “The manager is someone that likes to keep possession and likes the team to move the ball up the pitch. This philosophy suits me well.”
City, on the other hand, do not have such issues. Guardiola should be missing only two players – Aymeric Laporte and Ruben Dias, who are nursing back and hamstring problems respectively.
The City boss has won the Premier League four times, but lifted the FA Cup only once, in 2019.
Since thrashing Watford 6-0 in that final,
In those three years, Chelsea have reached the final on each occasion, but lost to Arsenal, Leicester City and Liverpool.
The Blues hope to avoid a third straight defeat by City this season – they also lost in the League Cup third round in November – and travel to the Etihad winless in four straight away matches in all competitions. AFP
