Gary
Neville says Graham Potter is under "massive pressure" at Chelsea, but the
owners must hold their nerve after backing the manager since his arrival.
Despite spending hundreds of millions of pounds on a raft of new players in
the January transfer window, they have found themselves in stuttering form
and languishing 10th in the Premier League table.
Their season hit a new low on Saturday when they were beaten 1-0 by bottom
side Southampton at Stamford Bridge, leading to boos from the fans at
full-time.
It has been a baptism of fire for Potter since his arrival from Brighton,
but Sky Sports pundit Neville says the Chelsea hierarchy must continue to
back their under-fire boss.
Speaking on the latest Gary Neville Podcast, he said: "Potter is under
massive pressure. You can see it in his face. The chances they missed in the
second half and the boos at the end of the game, felt a little ominous.
"I think they'll want to do the right thing, the Chelsea owners. They've
sacked a manager very early in the season in Thomas Tuchel, they've owned
their new manager, they've brought recruitment assistants in alongside him,
so they've invested heavily in Graham and his team… but they have to hold
their nerve if they want to see it through.
"But I suspect that nerve is being tested, as any owner's would be when
you've spent that level of money and you're losing games at home to the
(side) bottom of the league.
"He's a fantastic coach but you feel watching Potter he's a measured man,
he's a good coach… you get the idea he'd like to build a pattern of play
with a group of players on a consistent basis and he's got 33 of them
staring at him down the barrel saying 'play me'.
"And these aren't junior players, they're senior internationals and I can't
imagine what it must be like to have 33 players. I was a manager for a very
short period and we had a squad of 22, 23 at Valencia and you're looking at
11, 12 players every week thinking 'I'm not going to play you'.
"He's got 22 players who are not going to play. If they're all fit - how do
you even get them all into a training session?
"A good training session you'd have 16-20 players. If you've got 22 players,
five of them are training with the reserves or on their own. That isn't
right. They needed to unload players off Graham Potter to take the pressure
of handling all those players that are expecting to play every single week.
"I've used the word chaotic and I think it has been chaotic in the first six
months of the Boehly ownership. I won't change my mind on that. They've
invested heavily, they're putting their money where their mouth is and are
saying all the right things. But at this moment in time, it won't be a
successful project when you have 33 players all looking at the manager and a
manager who wants to build a measured project.
"It feels a little bit conflicted with what Potter would ordinarily be
really strong at and what the ownership seem to want in respect of filling a
squad and accumulating players of that sort of volume."
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