Seven weeks ago, Graham Potter left Brighton & Hove Albion for a team lower in the Premier League table.
Months after leading the Seagulls to their best-ever top-division finish — ninth place in 2021-22, just five points away from qualifying for European competition, with late-season wins over Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United — Potter's team had started the new season brilliantly, beating United again and walloping Leicester City 5-2 on the way to fourth in the table. Chelsea were only three points behind them in sixth, but had just fired Champions League winner Thomas Tuchel after a disastrous start to this season's European campaign.
The pull of the top competition was evidently too much: Potter left the Sussex coast for London to take over Chelsea's high-end, low-cohesiveness roster, and order has more or less been restored since.
On Saturday, Potter's Blues will visit Brighton, having risen to fifth in the table (fourth in points per game) and clinched first place in their Champions League group. Their next loss will be Potter's first. Brighton, meanwhile, has labored under new manager Roberto de Zerbi, getting smited once again by the god of finishing and falling to ninth.
Potter and De Zerbi are two of quite a few coaches to have taken over for fired or departed coaches in the first three months of the season. Four jobs at Champions League clubs have already come open and been filled, and it's not yet November. Let's check in on how some of the more big-name managers are performing in their new roles.
Graham Potter (Chelsea)
Hired: Sept. 7
Matches: 9 (6 wins, 2.33 points per game)
Goals average: 1.8 for, 0.4 against
xG average: 1.3 for, 0.9 against
Primary changes in odds (per FiveThirtyEight's SPI): From 51% to 100% to advance to the Champions League knockout rounds, from 35% to 50% to finish in the Premier League top four
One of the most common impulses when making a coaching change, no matter the sport, is to hire the opposite of your ex. In terms of temperament, Chelsea may have done just that, replacing the mercurial Tuchel with the more laid-back Potter, but they also replaced a tinkerer with a tinkerer.
Tuchel had deployed five starting formations in his seven matches this season (five with three at the back, two with four), with injury and restlessness both causing him to shuffle his lineups constantly. Potter has done exactly the same thing: Nine matches have seen six starting formations, though he has begun to settle in. Over the last four matches, Potter has stuck primarily with something close to a 3-4-2-1.
Almost no one on the Chelsea roster can say that Potter hasn't given them a chance thus far — no one but Edouard Mendy (and attacker Hakim Ziyech), anyway. The 30-year old goalkeeper was Tuchel's first choice and a stalwart on 2021's Champions League-winning squad. But he battled form issues late last season, and an injury meant that Potter had to go with Kepa Arrizabalaga between the posts. Kepa's brilliant form has since necessitated that he remain in the lineup. He's the only player to have recorded 100% of the available minutes under Potter. Incredibly, no one else has topped even 80%.
Potter has thus far given at least 128 minutes to 19 players, a product of both experimentation and necessity. Midfielder N'Golo Kante and defenders Reece James and Wesley Fofana are currently injured and have combined for just 478 minutes since Potter took over. But virtually everyone else has gotten a run, from old (Thiago Silva, with 78% of available minutes) to young (Trevoh Chalobah, 73%), from newcomer (Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, 62%) to stalwart (Cesar Azpilicueta, 54%) and from young Englishman (Conor Gallagher, 39%) to young American (Christian Pulisic, 25%).
It's difficult to produce results while experimenting to this degree, but Potter and Chelsea have done so thus far. They have allowed just four goals despite all the shuffling in the back, and 11 different players have scored at least once. The Chelsea attack comes from everywhere and everyone: Of the 19 players with at least 100 minutes, nine are averaging between 0.26 and 0.54 combined xG+xA per 90 minutes, led by Gallagher (0.54) and Aubameyang (0.45).
Chelsea pulled 10 points from four Champions League matches — two wins over Italian champions AC Milan and a win and a draw against Austrian champions FC Salzburg — to clinch advancement there, and after opening with three Premier League wins, they settled for home draws against Brentford and Manchester United.
Their xG averages aren't as positive as their overall scoring averages, but that's primarily because of one match: a 2-0 win at Aston Villa. The Blues produced just 0.9 xG from eight shots, while Villa produced 1.8 from 18, but a brilliant performance from Kepa and a pair of opportunistic goals from Mason Mount — one a pounce on a defensive mistake, the other a brilliant free kick from 30 meters out — secured the victory. In only one other match (0-0 vs. Brentford) did they create a lower xG total than their opponent.