Todd Boehly is targeting another manager, but none of the usual rules apply at a club where nobody has a clue what is going on
, from the ninth tier of the English game to semi-pro football in Sweden via the Ghana women’s team, but his one concession to managing Chelsea was to buy a new rollneck. The result of which was that he looked quite smart standing in his technical area like Ahab on the bridge, desperately scanning the horizon for the quarry he has hunted all these years: a centre-forward who can score.
Nice understated men don’t win titles. Manuel Pellegrini was aggressively boring in press conferences, but there was a darkness in his eyes as befits a man who once faced down rioters after a superclásico at El Monumental. Bob Paisley was taciturn, but his cardigan covered a ruthless soul. But perhaps that was the Great Disruptor’s greatest masterstroke: nobody expected him to place his project in the hands of somebody with the demeanour of a polite manager of a mid-range hotel.
Potter was doubted from the start by those who wanted a starrier name. Some supposedly found themselves Googling the bloke from Brighton to see what else he’d done. Overseas players, unfamiliar with Potter as a surname and apparently unaware of Phoenix Nights, made the obvious Hogwarts jokes and started suggesting Mykhailo Mudryk struggled for playing time because he looks like Draco Malfoy.
Julian Nagelsmann has similar footballing principles to Thomas Tuchel, who was sacked by Chelsea in September.If anything went wrong, critics were always going to say Potter couldn’t cut it at elite level. Which may or may not turn out to be true; it’s just that this Chelsea isn’t really a fair test.
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