Inside Graham Potter’s plan to break the mould at West Ham | OneFootball

New Hammers manager is determined to deliver style and substance after positive start to long-awaited comeback

The West Ham managerial post does not tend to be advertised with a honeymoon period.

David Moyes waded into a relegation battle on both occasions he took the job. Julen Lopetegui had Lucas Paqueta’s FA charge for alleged gambling offences slide across his desk five hours after he was unveiled. For Graham Potter, it lasted five minutes at a push.

Recent recruitment has been bad, Potter’s squad is thin and at times West Ham have the feel of a club where too much stuff just seems to happen.

The scene, though, also hinted at West Ham’s potential.

After 20 months out of work following his Chelsea exit, Potter signed a two-and-a-half-year deal at West Ham

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Whatever Fullkrug’s faults, and the questionable merits of giving a 31-year-old a four-year deal, it still takes a club of stature to tempt Germany’s No9, whose goals had helped fire Borussia Dortmund to the Champions League final only weeks before.

Potter felt the pull himself, having turned down several illustrious European jobs before saying yes to co-chairman David Sullivan’s call.

Therein lies the twin challenge of Potter’s reign. His first act must be to stabilise and correct so much of what went wrong in the final months of Moyes’s tenure and the disastrous six for which Lopetegui had the helm.

But to truly succeed in east London, he must kick on, to deliver on the ambition of a club that won a European trophy barely 18 months ago and sees itself, with its 60,000-seat stadium, Premier League coin and London advantages, as having all the tools to compete on loftier terms.

Fresh start for all

You might point out that Potter would have a better chance had he been given the job last summer.

West Ham had a long run-up at recruiting Moyes’s successor, it becoming clearer each week through the second half of the season that the campaign’s end would bring a parting of ways.

They considered Potter and flew Ruben Amorim to London, but in the end were seduced by Lopetegui’s (fairly brief) experience in English football and his CV in Spain.

He was seen as the safe choice. Long before he was sacked last week, it became clear he was the wrong one.

So, along came Potter, out of the game for 20 months since being axed by Chelsea, to sign a two-and-a-half-year deal as the board’s unanimous choice, ahead of Paulo Fonseca and Christophe Galtier.

Potter feels, and certainly looks, better for a break spent well.

Potter says he is ‘a better coach for the [Chelsea] experience and well rested’ as he bids to make West Ham a force again

Yui Mok/PA Wire

He studied other coaches, in football and beyond, meeting England rugby chief Steve Borthwick among others. He travelled to the Falklands to speak to British troops, and to Spain, where he could attend games under the radar.

That became desirable after he took his sons to Arsenal vs Crystal Palace when Roy Hodgson was under pressure and ended up being linked with the Eagles job in a case of two and two making five. He has been learning Spanish, too.

Through it all, Potter told himself he was a Premier League manager at heart.

For this season, he will be one of those exclusively. West Ham are not in Europe for the first time in four seasons and Friday’s 2-1 defeat at Villa ended hope of an FA Cup run.

Barring something miraculously good or catastrophically bad, there is not a great deal to play for in terms of league position either.

That, though, may be no bad thing, serving up a version of the preseason Potter never had, with the only demand for the next five months that signs of life emerge. The hard work has already begun.

Roots and green shoots

Potter’s first training session at Rush Green last Thursday - his only session before his dugout debut - ran for 90 minutes, a quarter-of-an-hour longer than West Ham’s norm.

He focused on high-intensity pressing, set-pieces and opposition-specific threats, but was careful not to “overload” his players with too much new information or try to “reinvent the wheel”.

The first-half at Villa delivered some of West Ham’s most exciting football of the season, albeit that bar is not high.

Potter played a 4-2-3-1, but with a twist, bringing Mohammed Kudus into No10 and pushing the struggling Paqueta onto the left, where he had played much of his best football in his maiden campaign.

From there, the Brazilian finished a sweeping move for the opener that had involved the entire front-four.

Not helped by injuries to Fullkrug and Crysencio Summerville, the Hammers faded, retreating into old habits and making clear the scale of Potter’s task in transforming the way his team plays.

There is an unusual focus on style before substance at the start of the new regime, and not only because there is so little left to play for this season in terms of results.

Even at the peak of Moyes’s reign, there was discontent over his conservative approach and when the defensive solidity began to fade, the Scot’s time was clearly up.

Lopetegui arrived with certain expectations, having managed Real Madrid and Spain, but brought a tactical approach players did not buy into and did not represent a radical enough change.

The same defensive flaws remain, with Potter inheriting the fourth-worst backline in the top-flight, while West Ham’s attack has not matched the form of last season and was missing two key figures - Jarrod Bowen and Michail Antonio - even before Fullkrug’s injury.

Success cannot come without addressing both issues and Potter has been quick to stress the need for “balance”.

There was certainly balance to West Ham on Tuesday night, when a 3-2 win over Fulham spelt lift-off for Potter at the London Stadium.

Potter got lift-off at West Ham with a 3-2 win over Fulham in his first home game in charge on Tuesday

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Efforts to paper over the cracks of a depleted forward line prompted Potter to ignore calls to start 32-year-old Danny Ings, instead deploying Paqueta up front.

The Brazilian scored and was man of the match, while a midfield trio of Guido Rodriguez, Edson Alvarez and Tomas Soucek appeared stodgy on paper but worked a treat in thwarting Fulham.

Soucek finished off a slick move for the second goal, as the Hammers jumped to 12th in the league.

“It is hard to be a sexy name when you’re called Potter,” the new man once quipped. “Especially if your first name is Graham.”

His Brighton side, though, played attractive football, with their possession share lifted from 41 per cent to 52 per cent in Potter’s first season in charge.

Crucially, their tactical discipline without the ball and pressing improved dramatically, as well.

It did not happen overnight and the London Stadium is not renowned for patience. But such is the desperation for change that Potter may be afforded more time than most.

Investment available

Before having an unhelpful number of expensive purchases thrust upon him at Chelsea, Potter’s name was made moulding teams at Ostersunds, Swansea and Brighton into more than the sum of their parts.

Under Lopetegui, West Ham were far less than theirs. Talented as their respective squads are, none of Bournemouth, Fulham and Nottingham Forest boast the star power of Paqueta, Kudus (left) and Bowen, yet all have broken into the top half (and higher) of the Premier League.

The success of these savvier sides is frustrating for West Ham supporters, both for broadening the field of European contenders and highlighting how far their own club have underachieved this term.

Injuries have hit brutally hard, particularly in attack, where the loss of Antonio for months following an horrific car accident has been compounded by serious injuries to Bowen and Fullkrug.

Jarrod Bowen is out with a fractured foot - but the West Ham captain is pushing to return ahead of schedule

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Moyes used to fret over striker signings, worrying that the wrong one could cost a manager his job, but with Ings the only fit centre-forward at the club, West Ham plan to bolster their attack this month, with Potter heavily involved in recruitment decisions.

Brighton’s Evan Ferguson is injured but of interest and may become available on loan, while Manchester United forward Marcus Rashford is one of the more aspirational names linked with a move.

Funds have also been made available in case it is possible to affordably strengthen in midfield, where attempts to replace Declan Rice have failed across three windows.

Though his first start under Potter on Tuesday displayed a marked improvement, the free agent signing of Rodriguez from Real Betis, pushed hard by Lopetegui, has so far been a disaster.

Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and Carney Chukwuemeka are short of game time at Chelsea and on the Hammers’ radar.

Potter, though, is also ready to look within, handing teenage left-back Ollie Scarles a first domestic start and already paying heed to the club’s tradition of developing homegrown talent.

Steidten’s influence

Potter memorably described his time amid the chaos at Chelsea as like being caught in a washing machine.

At West Ham, off-field trouble tends to come more often from dirty laundry being hung up for all to see.

There has been both internal ire and external criticism at the way Lopetegui was treated in his final days, the 58-year-old taking training even as leaks told the world he was a lame duck.

Moyes, too, had found himself working for weeks while other managers were lined up for his job.

All clubs do their due diligence ahead of time on such appointments and many deals are done long before they are announced, but few seem to conduct their business quite so noisily.

None of that is Potter’s fault, but serves as a warning that the narrative at West Ham will not always be within his, or his players’, control.

Criticised through his time at Chelsea as a bland communicator, the new boss must now become the convincing face of a well-aligned club, which will not be straightforward since there remains a degree of uncertainty behind the scenes.

In the immediate future, there is the question of Tim Steidten’s role.

The technical director was the common denominator in what have been described as “strained” relationships with both Lopetegui and Moyes and while Potter committed to working with him in his opening press conference, he was not exactly effusive, never mentioning Steidten by name.

West Ham are expected to review the position of technical director Tim Steidten

Steven Paston/PA Wire

Among fans, the prevalent view is that Steidten is a figure too often seen and heard, gratingly so given the return on recent investment in the squad is mixed at best.

There have been reports that the German may soon be out of the door.

Meanwhile, questions over the club’s long-term ownership remain unresolved.

Part of the Gold family’s stake has been up for sale since October 2023, while Sullivan will surely cash his chips at some stage, particularly now that a penalty clause for doing so that was linked to the London Stadium move has expired.

Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky had an option for a full buyout written in when buying a 27 per cent share in 2021, but has so far been content to sit tight, focusing instead on his takeover of Royal Mail.