Set to sign
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Graham Potter is widely reported to be on the verge of joining West Ham as the club’s new manager. On Wednesday afternoon the London club confirmed the departure of Julen Lopetegui after just seven months in charge of the Premier League side. Reports in England have speculated for a number of days now that the decision to sack the Spanish tactician was, in part, due to the club having Potter lined up as a potential replacement. The Athletic reported shortly after West Ham’s statement on Lopetegui’s sacking that Potter had agreed a two-and-a-half-year deal to become the club’s new manager.
How good is Graham Potter’s record in the Premier League?
After cutting his managerial teeth at Swedish side Östersund and then an impressive season at Swansea City in the Championship, Potter made a name for himself in the English top-flight when he was appointed Brighton manager in 2019 and duly set about taking the Seagulls to new heights in the Premier League. In his first two seasons at the club, Brighton finished fifteenth and sixteenth, but truly hit their stride after that with a ninth-placed finish in 21/22 and just five points off qualification for European football.
Such an impressive feat clearly won Potter a number of admirers and shortly after the start of the 22/23 season Chelsea swooped in for the English tactician. Brighton, to their credit, had no intention of letting their managerial miracle-worker go and forced the Stamford Bridge club to cough up €23 million in compensation before Potter was allowed to swap Brighton for London. However, his arrival at Chelsea coincided with a record-breaking spending spree from the club’s new owners, which led to Potter contending with 17 new signings and €611m spent on transfer fees in his first six months at the club. And the added pressure of so much money being spent on the squad and just 12 wins from his first 31 games then quickly led to Potter being dismissed just seven months after leaving Brighton.
In total, Potter has coached in 141 Premier League games over the course of his managerial career, winning 41 games, drawing 50 and losing 50. That record gives the 49-year-old manager a points-per-game average of 1.23 in the English top-flight, which is higher than the 1.15 points per game that Lopetegui averaged at West Ham this season. However, it is notably lower than David Moyes’s average as West Ham manager in the Premier League (1.34), as well as that of Manuel Pellegrini (1.25) and Slaven Bilic (1.33). Which may lead some fans of the Hammers to question whether Potter really is the man to take the club back towards the top half of the league table.
Of course, Potter would likely point to his last season at Brighton, where he averaged 1.35 points per game, which would put him above Moyes and any other West Ham manager in the modern era in terms of success in the Premier League. And, crucially, the English manager did all of that while playing exciting, attacking football. If Potter can reach such heights with this West Ham team, while avoiding the dull, defensive football that dogged Lopetegui and his predecessors, then he’ll surely be a success at the London club. But it remains to be seen whether he can do exactly that.
