Well, firstly, I don't think he's actually made many 'costly mistakes' for Brighton.
But this is the problem, Potter had a lot of spells like this, and then would follow it up with a spell of being completely abject. The consistency lasted a few months and then would go pear shaped. Just before this spell with a win against Watford we were looking at Europe and 6 games later relegation. Same with at the beginning of the season, a fantastic start (4 Wins in 5) and then no wins in the next 10. You see this pattern in the 2020/21 season. With three straight wins in the early part of 2021 and then followed by 2 draws and 3 losses. He showed this at Chelsea as well, not being able to consistently put together results. He also didn't send players to new heights, I and many were quite happy to let Solly go before RDZ came in, I think any debate that Potter and RDZ are anyway near the same level is very very very wide of the mark. There are so many factors to the reasoning for the inconsistency this season, potter never had those excuses (injuries, European fixture congestion, fatigue)/I thought you said in your previous post that Potter didn't have consistency in his locker?
Seriously though, looking at the results from that Norwich game on, I don't see any reason to doubt we could (I won't say would because that's obviously impossible to know) have finished 6th with any manager of roughly Potter or RDZ's level. We just had a really good team by that point.
Edit: I don't want that to come across as pro or anti Potter or De Zerbi, I'm just generally agnostic about how much difference any of them make.
But with all respect Burnley are not the worst team, we have scored 11 goals past them this season, where as in a similar season, Potter's team scored 0.
All I'm going to give you from this is that he is small. 5'7 is tiny in football.
I dont get the whole Potter not taking players to new heights when we built a class team based on largely unknown cheap players. Trossard was a different level when he left from when he came. Bissouma for Hughton and Bissouma for Potter. Alexis a lot better as time went on Caicedo we will never know what he´d looked like if playing from start Dan Burn improved a lot probably. Multiple times with Potter we played 10-12 games in a month because Covid we are never facing that congestion again. Long term injuries to Lamptey when he was our only quick players long term injuries to March Welbeck. Same problem as Roberto same problems as nearly all current PL managers
Saying remember we´re Brighton not as good or big as the best teams after winning against Spurs is a more belittling comment than the history lesson one imho and would seen that way if uttered by the Solihull dullard but all of a sudden going out in media saying how small and shit we are resonates with the people following the dumb Zerbi cult. As I said looking forward to see him going bring in anyone else.
But unlike Potter the stuffings weren't part of really long suffering runs. We followed our loss to Villa with a wonderful 2-2 draw in our first ever European away game at one of the most menacing stadiums in the world. The 4-0 loss to Luton was followed by a 4-1 battering of Palace (which was a joy). The loss to Roma (which was entirely forgivable tbh - a step too far in a wonderful adventure) was followed up with a win against Forest and a face-saving top performance against Roma.Not many results in there to match the stuffings we’ve had this season alone though, and the goals for in the last few months are very similar
You could say the same about that Leicester win I’ve seen it mentioned so many times as a Potter justification.I mean, there's cherry picking your facts and there's whatever the hell this is.
"We were shit under Potter. No, not in his last game, the one before. Don't look at any games further back than that though, just his penultimate game."
I'm not in a cult, and it's not more belittling to fans than directly telling them to have a history lesson on their own club. We have a smaller budget than the majority of the league - it's a fact. Long live RDZ.
I would suggest that the team by 2022 was simply better than it had been earlier in Potter's run.
Er yes, but he also beat Man U twice and took 26 points from the other 13 games with a human in goal.
Okay, fair enough - he took our decent team to the SECOND WORST team in the league and scraped a point. I'm not sure it really makes a difference to the point, though!
A loss at Roma was indeed, 'entirely forgivable'.
I see your 'scraped' and raise you 'gifted a very lucky'.
I mean if we can't revere the manager who took us to our highest ever position, and qualified us for Europe for the first time ever (something 90% of football fans will never see with their club), as a demi god, who are we meant to revere as a Demi God?
I think with Solly's form before RDZ came in, it begged the question whether he was good enough to take us to the next level. A good player, but lets not pretend his finishing was any good. I think RDZ took him to a much better level. The only similar player I particularly credit with Potter improving was Dan Burn. I think the likes of Bissouma and Trossard always had quality (although I always thought (and still do) think Trossard is incredibly inconsistent) they would have always improved. Mac Allister was very inconsistent under Potter, until the very end.
I have no memory of any of the fixture congestion that RDZ has dealt with was ever dealt with by Potter. I'd like someone to point to this period?
It really is amazing the narratives that come out
Roma also took that game way more seriously than I expected. It felt huge being there, like it was their biggest game of the season.
