Gary Neville has suggested that the presence of someone like Tottenham Hotspur boss Antonio Conte, Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola and Liverpool’s Jurgen Klopp might be off-putting for Graham Potter at Chelsea when he is on the sidelines.
The former right-back shared that when he was Valencia manager, he felt ‘a million miles away’ from the likes of Diego Simeone when they were on the other side of the touchline and he thinks Potter could now be feeling the same at Chelsea, as he told The Overlap.
In terms of being an elite coach, Spurs, Man City and Liverpool have all of that, with the trio all winning the Premier League title during their days in English football.
Now, this is Potter’s biggest job of his career and it’s not the norm for a club in the Champions League to hand an English coach such a huge job.
Yes, Frank Lampard was handed the gig at Stamford Bridge, but that would have been largely down to the fact that he is a club legend and a big name in the game, for someone like Potter, unfortunately, he doesn’t have that.
Therefore, when things start to go wrong, that will be used against him, and following Chelsea’s defeat to Arsenal on Sunday, the Englishman is seeing a lot of criticism being thrown his way.
Nonetheless, this is what Neville had to say about Potter on the sidelines for Chelsea when he is up against the likes of the ‘brilliant’ Conte, who are like ‘animals’.
“I said this when I went over to Valencia,” said Neville. “Graham Potter is an elite coach, a fantastic coach, he’s 100 times better coach than I will ever be.
“But I remember being on the touchline and Simeone was there. And Valverde was there and thinking ‘I am a million miles away from that’. You can feel it.
“Sometimes, you can see a manager on the touchline, then you see Pep, Klopp and you see Conte even, who is a brilliant manager, sometimes their presence. They are animals. I have said this before.
“Graham Potter will have to break into that realm of managers. We always what Frank to do well at Everton. Stevie to do well at Villa, but of course, he left a couple of weeks ago. We want them to do well. To step into that next level, but it’s hard.”
POTTER NEEDS TIME
Just like Mikel Arteta when he first walked through the doors at Arsenal, because he has no past experience at the elite level, then there will be more questions of him than answers.
Now, in Arteta’s case, he had zero experience as a manager, whilst Potter can also be judged on what he did at Brighton, but in order to prove his worth and answer his critics at Chelsea, he needs patience.
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