[Albion] Times article on Potterball

Bullish article on Potterball: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/...ansformation-just-ask-pep-guardiola-h63jgt7br

Think it opens as from subscription but will cc and paste if not.

Behind the paywall..

Copy paste someone please

OK - pasted below minus photo captions

The Game Daily: Graham Potter needs time for Brighton transformation — just ask Pep Guardiola

James Gheerbrant

Wednesday March 18 2020, 12.00pm, The Times
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I first met Graham Potter in February 2018, in a small town in Sweden’s frozen middle, when he was manager of a club called Östersunds. Potter had hauled Östersunds from the fourth tier to the top flight, and even more improbably, steered them past Galatasaray and Hertha Berlin in the Europa League, which had brought him onto the radar of football’s collective consciousness and made him an irresistible draw for gallivanting feature writers.
We chatted for an hour in his office, where it was hard not to notice a photo of Potter and the Östersunds squad in a production of Swan Lake, part of a zany but apparently effective programme of cultural bonding that also included a team book club, and lessons on reindeer husbandry where Potter played stag while his squad tried to lasso him.


Fifteen months later, Potter pitched up at Brighton, via a successful spell at Swansea which enhanced his reputation and slightly took the edge off his Viking shaman aura. Still, after the stolid mediocrity of the Chris Hughton years, he seemed like an exciting and progressive appointment. But deep into his first season, results have been uninspiring. Brighton sit 15th in the Premier League, two points above the relegation zone. They have four fewer points and three fewer wins than they did at this stage last season. They are the only club in England’s top four leagues without a win in any competition this year.

Did Brighton get it wrong? Should they have been careful what they wished for? Strip away the layers of myth and mystique, the anecdotes and the antlers, and is Graham Potter — whose name has the generic footy-bloke overtones of a coach in an unlicensed computer game, or an ITV drama — just an ordinary football manager?

In a word, no. The first thing to understand is that Potter is trying to completely change the way that Brighton play football. That takes time: remember how badly Manchester City underperformed in Pep Guardiola’s first season while they adjusted to a new tactical philosophy. Potter is trying to turn Brighton from a low-possession team who concentrated their efforts on both boxes, into a ball-dominant side who are comfortable moving the ball through the centre of the pitch and winning it back high. It’s not quite putting Shane Duffy in a tutu, but as makeovers go, it’s not far off.

Under Potter this season, Brighton’s average share of possession has risen from 41.4 per cent to 55.7 per cent, their average number of passes per game has increased from 371 to 514, and their number of passes in the attacking half has shot up from 201 to 260. By comparison, in his first season after he took over from Manuel Pellegrini, Guardiola presided over an increase in City’s share of possession from 57.1 per cent to 64.9 per cent, a rise from 539 passes to 598, and a slight uptick in attacking-half passes from 353 to 357.

It’s difficult to overstate quite how fundamental a re-learning process this is, how much you have to break down and rebuild players’ conception of the game. It’s not just a case of twiddling the team’s internal rheostat from “broadly defensive” to “mostly attacking”. It’s almost like teaching them to play a different sport. “It’s like we’re showing them the numbers first, then the days of the weeks, then verbs,” Guardiola’s right-hand man Domènec Torrent says in Marti Perarnau’s biography, Pep Confidential. “You can’t expect super-quick results from this kind of immersion,” adds Lorenzo Buenaventura, another of Pep’s training-ground lieutenants. It’s one thing to try this sort of thing at a superclub, where the doomsday scenario is that you fall out of the Champions League places. It’s quite another to do it on the hoof at a team with the third-lowest wage bill in the division, with the relegation trapdoor yawning beneath you.


To put Brighton’s metamorphosis in further context: since 2010, theirs is by far the highest season-on-season increase in possession by a Premier League club (the closest is Maurizio Sarri’s Chelsea, who managed a relatively modest 8 per cent improvement on Antonio Conte’s last season). In the past decade, one team has seen a bigger rise in passes from one season to the next, and three have upped their attacking-half passes by more. It’s no exaggeration to say that Potter’s project represents quite possibly the most radical remodelling in recent Premier League history.

What is really interesting is the team that recorded the largest jump in the latter two categories: Manchester City — not between Pellegrini’s last season and Guardiola’s first, but between Pep’s first season and his second. In other words, it took two full years for Guardiola to effect his wholesale transformation of City’s playing style — his first season merely laid the groundwork. There are two ways of looking at this. Either Potter has managed to implement just as radical a revolution in half the time. Or he’s trying to build Rome in a day, when even the world’s most fastidious architect realised you need a bit longer than that to knock up a passable Colosseum.
Of course, reconstructing a football team is a PR exercise as well as a sporting one. There is a sort of infernal paradox at work: on one hand, you need time and goodwill to enact a long-term plan (and in fairness to Brighton, Potter has been afforded plenty of both); on the other hand, you occasionally need short-term fixes to buy that time and goodwill. And as Brighton’s wins have dried up, it’s been fascinating to watch Potter wrestle with this dilemma — whether to keep faith with players who embody his vision, like Adam Webster and Neal Maupay, or revert to trusty stalwarts like Duffy and Glenn Murray – like a Grand Designs homebuilder wondering whether to compromise on the outdoor cinema room or marble birdbath.
Sometimes, a reformist manager’s most important victories are won off the pitch. In his first Bundesliga season, another young coach with a bold idea of how to play football, Jürgen Klopp, endured a sequence of eight defeats in nine matches with Mainz. But what the table doesn’t record is that Klopp kept winning over people, unapologetically selling his philosophy beyond the narrow constituency of Mainz fans. He used interviews to connect Mainz’s playing style to a sense of mission. “We play the kind of football that I want to watch,” he said. “We run incessantly: that’s our code of arms. We are the vanguard of the regular guys in the pub.”

Potter has occasionally used his programme notes to preach the virtues of the transition to Brighton supporters, but to your average Match of the Day viewer he’s a forgettable figure who mostly deals in familiar beige platitudes. I sense that he’s wary of coming across as an evangelist, that he’s happy just to blend in and do his work behind the scenes. But I think this is a mistake.

A huge part of being a modern football manager is not just building a team, but building a dream: a compelling narrative of progress that enthuses fans and neutrals, attracts potential signings and transcends the fluctuations of form. It’s an aspect that Klopp, Guardiola and Mauricio Pochettino excel at. Part of the reason Brighton appointed Potter was that they rightly believed that a manager of his background would capture the imagination in a way Hughton or another coach of his ilk never could. There are not many football men who have relocated to Sweden, put their squad through ballet classes, or enrolled in a politics degree during their playing career. Potter is a fascinating guy with radically different ideas and real vision. He has quietly authored one of the best stories of the Premier League season at Brighton; when football returns, he shouldn’t miss his chance to tell it.

'...part of a zany but apparently effective programme of cultural bonding that also included ... lessons on reindeer husbandry where Potter played stag while his squad tried to lasso him'

Tom Hark said:

'...part of a zany but apparently effective programme of cultural bonding that also included ... lessons on reindeer husbandry where Potter played stag while his squad tried to lasso him'

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The Times journalist betraying an off the record comment by Potter about Ostersunds’s Bambi Swingers Club. Tacky journalism.

Interesting piece, thanks for posting the full version; I think the writer makes a particularly interesting point about Potter's media approach in the context of the changes he's made to the footballing style.

Waste of time here Brighton fans get impatient after 5 minutes and start demanding hoof ball to an ancient GM.

Very interesting article , thanks for posting since I don’t subscribe to the Times.
Something to remember in the dark days ... perhaps we should just keep the faith .....

So basically he's saying if we get relegated it will just be for 1 season as it takes 2 seasons for players to fully understand what the boss is trying to do , fair enough , i'm happy with how we're playing even if it means we do go down , i know that next season if it comes , i'll be watching the kind of football that makes me happy .

Even if we lose now i can't remember a game where i wasn't pleased with what we were trying to do , frustrated with the missed chances yes , but the way we're creating those chances are no longer just from set pieces , i hope most fans have the same attitude but there's always people that want more , that's just how it is .

Carry on Mr Potter ,in time everything will click into place and Nivea will be asking Davy Propper to do a shampoo advert .

"It’s not quite putting Shane Duffy in a tutu, but as makeovers go, it’s not far off" - come on, someone on here bust be able to knock that picture up quickly?

Typical of a writer who has actually only been to a couple of our games and is trying to extrapolate from the stats. There is no dispute that most people prefer the GP style of football to the CH style (or did, when it was markedly different and we actually played on the front foot). The problem is that, for all the passes (too many, I'd say), we don't create enough 'big chances' and we don't take them when we do.

Potter can be as evangelical as he likes about our style of play, he can't disguise that. And, to his credit, he doesn't try to.

This is quite something:

"To put Brighton’s metamorphosis in further context: since 2010, theirs is by far the highest season-on-season increase in possession by a Premier League club (the closest is Maurizio Sarri’s Chelsea, who managed a relatively modest 8 per cent improvement on Antonio Conte’s last season). In the past decade, one team has seen a bigger rise in passes from one season to the next, and three have upped their attacking-half passes by more. It’s no exaggeration to say that Potter’s project represents quite possibly the most radical remodelling in recent Premier League history."

The other bit I noted was the comment about 'beige' interviews. Keeping his gob shut as he recognises there is a real possibility of relegation this season and now is no time to crow about how smart he is. That makes sense, even if it is a tad irritating to hear him sounding like a night watchman at an allotment discussing the emergence of this season's potatos.

I like it. All of it.

TLDR:
- Brighton shouldnt play nice football because they are a relegation candidate and not Manchester City. Needs to play hoofball or die not trying.
- Potter isnt saying funny things like Jürgen Klopp when interviewed, this means he is obviously a bad football coach since the job - apparently - is about "selling a dream" to media and fans and not about improving the squad, the football and the results.

Swansman said:

TLDR:
- Brighton shouldnt play nice football because they are a relegation candidate and not Manchester City. Needs to play hoofball or die not trying.

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Well I agree, you didn't read it.

Excellent article.

Contrasts well with NSC.

Grombleton said:

Well I agree, you didn't read it.

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I did, it was a TLDR for people not keen on indulging fancy worded horseshit.

Swansman said:

I did, it was a TLDR for people not keen on indulging fancy worded horseshit.

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Apart from the fact that the article didn't at all say "Brighton shouldnt play nice football because they are a relegation candidate and not Manchester City. Needs to play hoofball or die not trying."

Grombleton said:

Apart from the fact that the article didn't at all say "Brighton shouldnt play nice football because they are a relegation candidate and not Manchester City. Needs to play hoofball or die not trying."

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"t’s one thing to try this sort of thing at a superclub, where the doomsday scenario is that you fall out of the Champions League places. It’s quite another to do it on the hoof at a team with the third-lowest wage bill in the division, with the relegation trapdoor yawning beneath you."

Swansman said:

"t’s one thing to try this sort of thing at a superclub, where the doomsday scenario is that you fall out of the Champions League places. It’s quite another to do it on the hoof at a team with the third-lowest wage bill in the division, with the relegation trapdoor yawning beneath you."

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That's not saying what you think it is. At all.