Graham Potter not happy with one thing Chelsea’s owners did when he was the manager

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Graham Potter has fired a dig at Chelsea’s owners for one thing that happened when he was manager at the club.

Graham Potter, 49, had a pretty brief spell at Stamford Bridge as the head coach. The Englishman was appointed in September 2022 on a five-year deal, but he was sacked after only seven months in April 2023.

We’re yet to see him return to management since leaving west London. Here is a look at his record as the Chelsea boss:

The Daily Mail previously claimed that Chelsea are still paying Potter a huge amount of money despite dismissing him over a year ago.

• READ MORE: England are still considering two former Chelsea managers to become next permanent boss, including Graham Potter

Graham Potter not happy with Chelsea owners

During an interview with The Telegraph this week, Potter has reflected on his time in the manager’s dugout at the Bridge. Interestingly, he’s criticised the Chelsea owners for their role in huge spending in the January transfer window of 2023.

Potter said: “We lost Reece [James] and Wesley [Fofana] to injury. I think we had the most players at the World Cup and pretty quickly afterwards we lost Raheem [Sterling] and Christian Pulisic.

“Then the ownership decided to invest a lot of money in the squad, £300 million in the January transfer window. Now, if you are spending £300 million on players that are coming from outside the Premier League, from countries that are having a mid-season break, then the reality is you can’t just imagine they are going to hit the ground running and everything’s going to be fine.

“But, obviously, if you spend £300 million, the pressure on the team goes up and the pressure on the coach goes up. And people go: ‘Come on then, you’ve spent all this money.’ I think if I’d have spent it on Harry Kane and Declan Rice, then fair enough, but at the time that was the decision. We tried to support it as best we could, but it left us with a challenge of a lot of players after January and then they can’t go anywhere.”

The January transfer window in 2023

We’ve heard above Potter’s frustration about how the mid-season transfer window went down under his watch.

Let’s take a look at the signings made during the crazy and busy window:

When you look at the names above, you can put a big tick by a few of those individuals. For example, Enzo Fernandez, Noni Madueke and Malo Gusto have featured as key starters so far this season.

Of course, there’s some questionable purchases as well that haven’t yet worked out.

Ultimately, we feel sympathy for Potter because of the chaos that was happening both on and off the pitch during his reign in charge. Hopefully, things have appeared to have settled down a bit now for current head coach Enzo Maresca.