Former Chelsea player says he “doesn’t understand” Potter’s tactics in first game | OneFootball

Chelsea manager Graham Potter has had just one game in charge, against Red Bull Salzburg in the Champions League.

It’s not much to go on, but plenty of pundits have decided to draw major conclusions from it already. Well, there’s not much else to talk about, we suppose.

William Gallas was at the forefront of the criticism in quotes picked up by the Metro.

He questioned Potter’s team selection in that Champions League group game.

“It’s difficult for me to understand why he wants to experiment with something like this, especially in a Champions League game. You are playing at home and you put Cucurella as a centre-back, you have Fofana on the bench with Koulibaly, Chalobah on the bench, and you put Sterling as a left-wing back? I don’t understand.”

We can’t say we totally agree. Sterling was used as a left wing back in theory, but he played so high up the pitch he was basically a spare attacker.

He scored our goal and got into plenty of good positions. And it was a game specific decision, as Potter explained afterwards.

The centre back issue is a little different, but we all understand that the new coach probably wanted to pick his club captain for his first game in charge.

If Koulibaly and Fofana still aren’t starting in a few weeks time, we will take Gallas’ criticism more seriously.