Graham Potter right to be cautious for now – Talk Chelsea

Three wins on the bounce has really relieved the pressure from Graham Potter in these last two weeks, and you can see and feel that whenever that final whistle has arrived in these last three games.

Potter needed some of that weight lifted off him, and whilst he has a big squad of players all getting used to playing together and many settling in to a new country and new league, his tactics have been super cautious, but super wise.

At Leeds, although it was a risk and it got too tense for my liking at the end, Potter preferred to try and close out the 1-0, and that’s exactly what we did. Those three points were hugely important and kick started our three on the bounce victories. It could have backfired, but it didn’t, therefore it proved to be wise.

Against Dortmund as well we closed it out late on by taking attackers off for midfielders and making it much harder to pass through us and score. Again, it proved to be a wise decision.

And on Saturday against Leicester, he did the same thing at half time – he took off an attacker for a midfielder, and this proved to be one of the wisest decisions he’s made so far.

We started the game and played until half time like this:

At half time, Potter switched it to 3-5-2/3-5-1-1:

This was a tactical move to make Chelsea more compact and hard to play through, and it again, proved to be the right decision with Chelsea even going on to get the third goal to finish them off.

Leicester still had chances in the second half of course, but moving to this more compact formation and filling the midfield, made us less open and harder to get through.

Potter being a manager under pressure has seen this cautious approach. But right now, it’s wise to be this way. All that matters is getting results on the board and seeing some progress, and in the last three games, we have seen both of those aspects.

As players start to settle more and grow used to each other, we are likely to see more dominant attacking performances and a much more dangerous Chelsea. At least, that is the plan.

I’m certainly not getting ahead of myself, but little by little we are again starting to see some improvements. And I think Potter has managed the last three games very well.