Chelsea
Chelsea

Gary Neville has given his opinion on who should Chelsea appoint as Graham Potter’s successor at Stamford Bridge. The Blues fired Potter on Sunday after their shocking 2-0 loss to Aston Villa at home. After only seven months in the job, the former Brighton manager was sacked while the team sat in 11th place in the Premier League.

After his departure, Todd Boehly, the club’s owner, has started looking for a third permanent manager to lead the club under his reign. And while the American billionaire searches for a new coach to ‘do things differently’, as was promised while appointing Potter, Neville has come in with a piece of advice for Boehly.

Chelsea
Chelsea sacked Graham Potter after he led them to a disastrous record of seven wins in just 22 league games. Credits: Twitter

Fans slam Neville’s choice on Chelsea’s next manager

Potter, 47, was lured away from the south coast in September by Chelsea who paid a staggering £20m buyout clause to Brighton to replace Thomas Tuchel. But Potter has been fired less than seven months after signing a lucrative five-year deal with the Blues, who are wallowing in the Premier League’s bottom half.

Chelsea’s team of sporting directors will be in charge of finding a long-term replacement of Potter before co-owners Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali make the final call. With just seven league wins from 22 games under the now sacked coach, Chelsea’s Champions League qualification hopes now solely rely on winning this year’s competition, a big ask from interim boss Bruno Saltor.

Meanwhile, prior to Everton’s match against Tottenham on Monday Night Football, Sky Sports analyst Gary Neville backed former Tottenham manager Mauricio Pochettino for the vacant job at Stamford Bridge. The former Valencia manager said:

“Everything Boehly is saying is that they have done their spending. They have spent £600m and they have done their spending apart from a centre-forward for the next three years. If they sign [Zinedine] Zidane, [Diego] Simeone, or [Luis] Enrique they are going to want another £300m because they won’t like some of the players they have signed. They have got to appoint a manager who is going to inherit and like the squad that they have. I think that man, because of a lot of them are young, is Pochettino.”

Since being fired by Paris Saint-Germain last summer after only 18 months in charge of the French club, Pochettino has been without a job. He was heavily linked to the Manchester United job after Ole Gunnar Solskjaer was sacked, but the Premier League giants chose to hire Erik ten Hag. Angry reactions to Neville’s selection poured in on social media from the Chelsea fans.