Chelsea boss Graham Potter seemed baffled himself after club owners Todd Boehly and Clearlake Capital went on a spending spree this month in a bid to turnaround the club’s form. The Blues are currently sat tenth in the Premier League, out of the FA Cup as well as the Carabao Cup and are through to the Champions League Round of 16, which could be their only major achievement this season.
As a result, the Boehly led group decided to make available a pool of new signings for Graham Potter, no matter the fee. They have so far spent close to £500m across the summer and winter markets, bringing in over half-a-dozen-signings. However, Potter has admitted that this is ‘no guarantee’ that their current form is going to get overturned overnight, and is rather a calculated risk taken by the owners.
Graham Potter suggests enormous spending is a major gamble
Graham Potter has so far welcomed six signings in this month alone, pertaining to their injury crisis and key players massively misfiring. PSV’s Noni Madueke became Chelsea’s latest and sixth signing this month, for £35m, following the acquisitions of Shakhtar winger Mykhaylo Mudryk for £88m, Molde striker David Datro Fofana for £10.5m, midfielder Andrey Santos from Vasco da Gama for £11m, defender Benoit Badiashile from Monaco for £35m and Atletico forward Joao Felix on a £9.7m loan deal.
Mudryk, their record signing this month is in line to make his debut against Liverpool today, as Potter aims to beat the Reds in the tenth vs the ninth battle of the Premier League. However, despite being armed with such firepower, the former Brighton manager, who understandably isn’t used to such spending spree underlined the face that they need to remain humble as this won’t guarantee immediate success. Potter said in his pre-Liverpool presser:
“There is no guarantee that this [Chelsea’s £190m spending this month] is going to work. With every decision, you should have the humility to say we haven’t got all the answers. You can’t see into the future, so you’ve got to make the best educated guess you can, try to predict as closely as you can what you think may happen. Then you make a decision accordingly. That is the challenge. To think, ‘Ok what is the right thing for us? How do we do that?’
“The players we have identified are young and they have got quality – as you saw with Badiashile at the weekend. With Mudryk and Joao coming on loan, there is a certain type of player signed in terms of age. They are starting their careers so they are ambitious, they want to achieve things. They are not here to be fourth or third, they are here to win and compete. Those are the upsides but is there a life without risk? No. Whatever you do there is risk and there is a chance it might not work.”
The Chelsea boss further emphasised on the importance of team building, when so many new players are coming into the team. It is being speculated that Graham Potter will be planning team-bonding sessions in order to help the new signings. While they won’t be like when it were at his previous club Ostersunds, where he took his players to ballet dancing, Potter still insisted that there’s a greater need to integrate the team. He added:
“We need to bring the group together. I have come here to win – that’s the job and that’s what we are trying to do. In order to do that you have to build a team, a culture, and an environment. I look at the last five years and the teams that have won the title have done so with 90-plus points.
“That’s not just about talent, that’s about environment, culture, a daily consistent behaviour, aligning your resources in the correct way and then fighting every day. So that’s what we have to do here. It would be a mistake to replicate things we did at Ostersunds. There’ll be no Swan Lake here! But building trust in a team, empathy and self-awareness, you can still do that without having to do a dance project.”