Chelsea transfer news: Potter under pressure to turn things around at Chelsea

Worst record since 1996 

Chelsea travel to Germany to face Borussia Dortmund in the Champions League on Wednesday in a clash that could either prove pivotal to Graham Potter’s reign at the club or potentially disastrous to his chances of keeping his job at Stamford Bridge. As the English manager continues to struggle in his new surroundings at the Premier League giants. 

Potter was appointed Chelsea head coach back in September, when he replaced the previously sacked Thomas Tuchel as the preferred candidate for new club owner Todd Boehly. In Potter, Chelsea had paid a sizable sum of money to release him from his contract with Brighton and had, hopefully, found a manager that they could rely on for years to come. However, things haven’t exactly worked out as smoothly as planned. 

Chelsea‘s managerial record” src=”https://tmssl.akamaized.net/images/foto/newsansicht/Chelsea-managerial-record-1676389553-101975.png?lm=1676389563″ alt=”Chelsea‘s managerial record” width=”503″ height=”629″/>

Worse than Lampard, Hiddink and Benítez – Potter’s poor Chelsea record

Indeed, despite a strong start at the club which saw Potter’s side win six of their first nine games and go undefeated until a 4-1 defeat to Brighton in his tenth game in charge, the wheels soon came off at Stamford Bridge in November and since then the 47-year-old head coach has struggled to get his team back on track. Since the aforementioned defeat to his former club, Potter’s Chelsea have won just three of their last 13 games in all competitions. And that has left the new manager with a rather unenviable record at the club. 

To date, Potter’s record at Chelsea points to a rather dismal average of just 1.48 points per game in all competitions with the club. Not only is that a sizable 29% drop from Tuchel’s average of 2.07 points per game, but it’s also the worst record for a Chelsea manager over the course of the past 10 years at the club. In fact, the last manager to have a record as poor as that was Glenn Hoddle, who coached the club between July 1993 and June 1996. And Hoddle & Co. certainly didn’t get to spend the kind of money Potter has had at his disposal this season.

As such, Potter is under immense pressure to start winning games with his star-studded squad and the next handful of fixtures could prove pivotal to his future at the club. While Dortmund have been flying high in the Bundesliga since the turn of the year, their squad’s market value stands at just €523 million – almost half Chelsea’s own market value of €1.04 billion. And in many ways, Chelsea are the traditional favourites for the tie and would normally be expected to progress to the next round. Couple that with three perfectly winnable clashes from their next four league games, against Southampton, Leeds United and Leicester in the coming weeks, and it isn’t hard to see the club’s hierarchy applying some real pressure on Potter and his backroom staff to start producing results sooner rather than later. 

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