‘He just won’t waver’: what Chelsea can expect from Graham Potter

“Which way do you want to die?” That was the question Graham Potter posed his players in the pre-match meeting before his Swansea side tackled Manchester City in the FA Cup three years ago. “It was: ‘They can either beat you with you laying on your back, tickling your belly, or they can beat you if you give it a right good go,” says Matt Grimes, a fixture under Potter during his sole season in charge of Swansea and now captain of the club.

“Because if you sit in a 10-man block, they’ll break you down and beat you anyway, so you might as well make a fist of it while you’re doing it. That’s how he sold it, we were all on the same page and in the end we ran them really close.”

Swansea were unfortunate to lose, with Pep Guardiola’s side awarded a soft penalty and Sergio Agüero’s winner offside. Those who have played for Potter reference his meticulous approach, be it carefully mapping out workloads or taking an interest in their personal lives, and on that night he gave Grimes the task of playing centre-back for the first time in his career against the Premier League champions.

“He said that their striker would always drop deep, so then you’ve got two centre-backs doing nothing, so it was about utilising one of the centre-backs,” Grimes says.

“Graham wanted me as a left-sided centre-back to step into midfield to mark Bernardo Silva, who was playing as a right-side No 8, high towards the striker. When the ball was on the other side I needed to step in to mark the player because if I didn’t and I was stood in line with the other centre-backs, they would find him and soon be at our back four, and we all know what happens when City and Bernardo Silva pick up balls in those positions. There were a couple of instances in the first