Graham Potter shrugs off Swan Lake suggestions as he prepares for two week team building | OneFootball

Chelsea are now into a two week period without a game, their cup eliminations not stinging so much now that they have a vital fortnight to recover injured players and get new signings bedded in.

This is the third mini-preseason that Graham Potter has had in his short time at Chelsea, and while he played down the impact of the first two, he has admitted that this one may have some benefits in terms of team building.

In quotes picked up by Adam Newson of Football.London he was clear about one thing however – there would be no repeats of the legendary “Swan Lake” ballet he put on with his Ostersunds players as a team building exercise.

“We’ve got some thoughts and we need to try to bring the group together of course. There are a few new faces – and it’s not just about what you do on the grass. It’s about how you interact as a team and how you interact as a group. So there are things we can do and we will use the two weeks to try to do that as best we can,” he explained.

“Hopefully, there is an element of team bonding – a little bit of building – because we’ve got the time, we’ve got the opportunity to do it, so it seems like it’s a good place to do it.

“There’ll be no Swan Lake here – and that was a unique period of my life and career. The bits around building trust in a team, building relationships in a team, building empathy and self-awareness, you can still do that without having to do art or a dance project.”

One gets the feeling that now he’s a Premier League manager, he wishes people would stop asking him about – and once he’s established himself, we’re sure they will.

Whatever they get up to, we expect a significant step up in organisation and chemistry when we return.