70
(^) Daily Mail, Wednesday, August 7, 2019
70 PREMIER LEAGUE 2 DAYS TO GO
FEAR CAN EAT YO
New boys Graham Potter of Brighton and Chris Wilder of
G
RAHAM POTTER
is preparing for his
first season as a
Premier League
manager know-
ing that much of what
he does will not
work. If that seems
a strange thing to
say, it feels less
so when the new
Brighton head coach
explains it.
Potter is only 44 and this is
his first Premier League job. Most
of his coaching career has been
spent coaching students and
working in Sweden. But what he
lacks in top-flight experience he
may yet make up for in originality
of thought. To this end, it was
when he was taking a Masters
in Leadership and Emotional
Intelligence almost 10 years ago
that he came across a principle
that underpins his work.
‘Football is a mistakes game,’
Potter explains. ‘You play for 90
minutes and the score is only
1-0 so by definition you can see
that things haven’t worked pretty
much all the time.
‘But football leans towards a
blame and fear culture and I
don’t want that. I met guys in my
education from medicine and the
military and they recognised that
it wasn’t necessarily about being
fearful of making mistakes, it was
about knowing they may come and
reacting positively to them when
they did. That resonated for me.
Fear means you can’t be yourself.
‘Mistakes would happen in
surgery, for example, and how the
surgeon reacted to that mistake
would determine life and death.
‘If someone can tell me how to
eliminate mistakes from football
then please do. I am all ears. But
my experience suggests there will
be bumps in the road. It’s how you,
and particularly the players, deal
with them that matters.’
Listening to Potter talk was
to be reminded of a conversation
with Eddie Howe a year earlier.
The Bournemouth manager
explained he spent much of his
early playing career terrified of
making a mistake because of the
reaction of his coaches and senior
team-mates.
‘The last thing you want is play-
ers scared,’ nods Potter. ‘For me to
add to the external pressures that
already exist in an environment
like the Premier League would
make no sense. You want them
confident enough to make their
own decisions out on the pitch
within a certain reference.
‘That culture you mention in
relation to Eddie was something I
experienced, yeah. Listen, you can
be too relaxed. So there is a fine
line. You need that motivational
climate don’t you?
‘But fear can eat you up and it
stops you being yourself on the
pitch and that’s no good.’
ONE of the most dispiriting
moments of last season came after
Brighton had lost a one-sided FA
Cup semi-final to Manchester City
by the only goal. Manager Chris
Hughton seemed satisfied that his
team had not been rolled over and
that felt wrong.
Hughton’s work at Brighton —
promotion and two years in the
Premier League — was terrific so
when he was sacked at the end of
last season it jarred. But chairman
Tony Bloom and technical director
Dan Ashworth wanted a more pro-
gressive style of football. Potter was
hired from Swansea to provide it.
‘You have to recognise and
respect the good work done here,’
stresses Potter. ‘But like any
coach, I will try to improve on what
happened last year. We will try to
improve our attacking play and
at the same time carry on the
defensive work that has been so
effective.’
Potter’s c.v. is not conventional
and that makes him interesting. A
workaday left back at teams such
as Birmingham, Stoke, Southamp-
ton and West Brom, he retired at
30 and spent time coaching at
universities in Hull and Leeds
before taking Ostersunds FK from
Sweden’s fourth division to the
Europa League in seven seasons.
Last year was spent at Swansea
where the club finished 10th in the
Championship.
Is his appointment a risk for
Brighton? ‘There are no certainties
in this game so I can’t really answer
that,’ he says. ‘All I can look at
is what I have done to get here.
Since the age of 30 I have educated
myself to try to improve.
‘I have taken the next natural
step every time and through that
mentality I have ended up here
and it’s going to be exciting. Every-
thing has gone well so far. But it’s
that time of year when nobody has
played a game yet so everybody is
happy, aren’t they?’
Potter is not a natural leader. In
his early days he found it difficult
to stand in front of a group. ‘I don’t
like the sound of my own voice,’ he
explains. ‘People make the assump-
tion that it’s natural to us. It isn’t.’
But he has always had the cour-
age to follow his instincts. It was
while reading a tabloid paper as a
player at Southampton that he
felt his mind ‘getting lazy’. Soon,
to the amusement of friends on
the team bus, he had swapped it
for a book on American politics.
S
IMILARLY, he believes
the day he decided to
retire was the most
important of his career.
‘It was probably the most power-
ful moment of my life,’ he said.
‘I could have carried on. But I
could see where it was going.
‘I didn’t want to be the guy who
would get someone the sack
because I wasn’t applying myself
properly. Rather than the game
kick me out I wanted to be pro-
active. I hadn’t enough money to
just sit on the sofa so I had to work
out what to do. Most players play
for as long as possible and then
maybe coach at that club.
‘I thought that didn’t necessarily
make for better coaches as it
meant everybody just carried on
doing what had always been done.
I needed to come out of it and
develop in a different way. It could
have been madness but it has
turned out well.’
OSTERSUND is marketed by the
Swedes as the Winter City and
with good reason. Potter and his
wife Rachel moved there with their
11-month-old son in 2010. Later
Rachel told her husband she cried
every day for weeks.
‘The family is the hardest part of
relocating,’ says Potter. ‘You know
you have to make it work because
that is the reason you are there.
But when you are at work what
do your family do stuck at home?
The club had sacked the manager
every year for years before so there
was pressure on me to succeed.
‘The way to make it work was to
travel around Sweden scouting
but that meant leaving my wife at
home with an 11-month-old kid
when it’s minus 25 outside.
‘She came on a few scouting trips
with me. I showed her the sights of
northern Sweden on a Sunday
afternoon and she was delighted
with that... trees. And more trees.’
Potter and Rachel had travelled
to Ostersund a year earlier to dis-
cuss a job at the club’s academy.
With a population of about 50,000,
it is Sweden’s 22nd biggest city
GRAHAM POTTER
INTERVIEW
IAN
LADYMAN
Football Editor
Potter: ‘I want
to give my
players the
confidence to
make their
own decisions
on the pitch’
PICTURE:
ANDY
HOOPER
EXCLUSIVE
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