POTTERINGS
Reflections on Graham's exit, from Dogma's JBD and Parker.
PissPotter
Right now, my head is all over the place. This isn’t unusual for me but, in relation to the reaction I’ve witnessed from myriad friends and Albion fans, I know I’m not alone.
He’s gone - our man has gone. He didn’t get pushed - he jumped.
Here was a man who ‘got it’. A man who told all of the ‘Johnny Come Lately’ (JCL) fans that booing a 0-0 home draw with Leeds, in the Premier League, required a history lesson being imposed upon them, to remind them just how far we’d come, and just how much we’d achieved.
Here was a manager who had the widely admired capacity to understand who we are, and to face down the media for using ‘teams like Brighton’. He was with us, he offered the ‘air quotation marks’ to the assembled international press, and let us know that he understood, stood with us, was on our side, and ready to give as good as he got if anyone dared try to ‘put us in our place’.
Is it any wonder that the inspiration, the hope, the joy, and the belief, all stemmed from a manager who celebrated with us, who understood who we were, where we came from, and what we might be capable of achieving in the future?
And so, to today, looking back in hindsight… as fair or as unfair as that might be.
Is telling our fans that they need a history lesson an acknowledgement that we should recognise where we have come from, and should be grateful for anything?
Is calling the press out on what they really mean by ‘teams like Brighton’ a convenient misdirection, designed to curry favour, when you’ve already told your fans to be grateful for whatever they get (even if it’s only a point, taken from a crap team)?
Isn’t ‘jumping ship’, mid-contract, the surest sign that he’s got his own idea of what ‘teams like Brighton’ might mean?
- Perhaps he only ever saw us as a small club to ride the waves upon
- Perhaps he saw us as a team that need to remember our place, no matter that we fail to score against a bottom of the table teams
- Perhaps he thinks we need a history lesson so that we don’t get ideas above what we deserve
- Perhaps he sees us as a stepping-stone to ‘greater things’ for himself, and anyone else he can take from us, no matter how much he made us believe that he had bought into Tony’s vision.
Graham Potter’s treatment of this team serves as a classic definition of ‘teams like Brighton’ - too small to matter, not worthy of loyalty, an interim shop window.
Despite what he has said in the past, he has defined ‘teams like Brighton’ through his own self-serving and violating actions, and he has compromised his own integrity, and that of our Chairman.
I guess it doesn’t matter now, bar the requirement for antacids to rid ourselves of the sour taste that results from being able to reinterpret what someone said in the past.
We move on, and we still aim for the stars because, irrespective of our history, we have as much right to dream, and believe, as anyone else - no matter what others might think and how much money they might have. In Tony we trust. Fuck the others.
JBD (he/him/wanker)
So Long, Motherfucker
Graham Potter’s arrival followed a fairly dismal seventeenth place league table finish - fourth from bottom - and his tenure has ended with the club sitting fourth from the top.
This represents progress, and for that we can be thankful. But any gratitude or warmth that might have come his way has been washed away by the timing and nature of the exit. To walk out now, just as things were finally coming together, is one thing. To act as gangmaster and take the entire backroom team with you is quite another. It goes without saying that I hope his time, their time, at Chelsea is an unmitigated disaster.
It certainly could be. Graham’s whole shtick is patience. Performance over results, trust the process, don’t boo because we didn’t win, chew down some tasty XG numbers you ungrateful fuckers. And he was awarded a remarkable amount of leeway and understanding at Brighton. This is the manager who delivered one home win in a calendar year, let’s not forget.
But Chelsea are the elite instant gratification social-media-age football club, with a slash and burn rinse and repeat modus operandi that’s perfectly attuned to the whims and pulses of the morons who support them.
And their new owner, if anything, has doubled down on this approach. Let a load of perfectly good players leave for nothing and replace at great fanfare (hello Cucu). Allow another batch of homegrown talents to walk away (hello Billy). Attempt to sign ageing show pony Ronaldo… at the owner’s behest. Sack yet another big-name manager following a spell of middling results.
Into this environment will step Euro football legends and highly respected stars of the game Graham Potter, Billy Reid, and Bjorn Hamberg.
Graham and crew will be processed and judged through a filter of instant success, at all costs. He will also be expected to preside over a succession of expensive signings, or at least not complain when somebody with a hugely inflated price tag is parachuted into the dressing room. He’ll also need to act like an entitled prick on the side lines.
Is this, culturally, much of a fit? Graham is the demure nobody man. His persona is built on thoughtfulness and pragmatism, the modest humble guy who’d be happier in a tracksuit, bashfully diverting away praise and complimentary remarks.
But the nature of the exit would suggest there’s another side to that persona: arrogance, a ruthless streak, and a total lack of respect towards the football club that has supported your progress and development.
By all accounts the call arrived on Wednesday morning and he was straight up the A23 in his middle-management executive salon. No compunction, no hesitation… yes Todd or Ted or Turd or whatever the fuck your name is, I’d love to come talk.
This is a brash and clumsy way to treat Tony Bloom, but for somebody with a degree - don’t you know - in emotional intelligence, it’s a calculated act of aggression. Maybe he's the perfect fit for his new employer after all?
Fuck you. Sincerely, Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club.
Parker