Graham Potter agrees with Jamie Carragher on Chelsea transfer 'problem'
Former Chelsea head coach Graham Potter has agreed with previous comments from pundit Jamie Carragher over the challenge he was presented with at Stamford Bridge after the January transfer window.
The former Brighton man arrived at the club in September 2022, just after a summer of heavy spending under new owner Todd Boehly. The head coach was backed heavily in the January window, with nine new players arriving, costing over £300 million.
Midfielder Enzo Fernandez was among the new arrivals, with Chelsea paying a £106.8 million fee to Benfica for the player. The transfer activity in the winter window left Potter with a big squad to deal with and the expectation that comes with a big transfer budget, something that he has now revealed was a ‘difficult situation’.
“A few of them just had to sit on the floor,” The former revealed in an interview with the Daily Telegraph about fitting his squad into the meeting room at Cobham.
“It’s not ideal, of course. Everybody recognised it was a really difficult situation because you can only pick 11 players and if you’ve got 20 players not playing, it doesn’t matter where you are. If you can find a coach out there who says: ‘Yeah, that’s the best condition for me,’ I’d be very surprised.”
The problems that Potter encountered were predicted by Carragher at the time. The pundit outlining the challenge that the head coach would face in managing a big squad.
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Speaking on Sky Sports during the coverage of deadline day in January 2023, he said: “It’s also the effect on the players who are already there and if players feel like they’re not going to get an opportunity, if they can’t get certain players out today, what’s the feeling like, what’s the spirit like on the training pitch?
“You even listen to Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp, they don’t like the biggest of squads for that reason. It’s hard to keep people happy, you need to keep everyone upbeat and feeling like they’ve got a chance of playing and contributing as well through a season, so that could be a big problem for Graham Potter between now and the end of the season.”
Potter left Chelsea just two months after the end of the winter transfer window. He won three of the 10 games in all competitions after the closure of the window with a 2-0 defeat to Aston Villa in his final game in charge of the club.