Chelsea Boss Graham Potter Shows Good Head Coaches Are Undervalued

Chelsea boss Graham Potter takes on his former employees Brighton and Hove Albion this weekend.

Since his move earlier in the season, the fortunes of the two clubs have changed dramatically. Chelsea are undefeated with six wins and three draws in the nine games Graham Potter has been in charge at Stamford Bridge. Meanwhile Brighton are yet to win under new head coach Roberto De Zerbi.

Some reports claim Graham Potter is the most expensive manager ever. Chelsea had to pay Brighton $25.5 million for Potter and his staff. That’s slightly more than Bayern Munich paid RB Leipzig for Julian Nagelsmann, although the fee for Potter alone comes to slightly less than Nagelsmann’s fee.

But given the transformative effect that Potter had on Brighton, that fee seems ridiculously low.

It’s roughly a third of what Chelsea paid Brighton for Marc Cucurella this summer, and Potter’s impact on both Brighton and Chelsea is so much more than the Spanish left back that it wouldn’t even fit on the same scale. In 2018, Brighton spent a similar amount as they just got for Potter when they signed Iranian forward Alireza Jahanbakhsh, who struggled after moving from Eredivisie side AZ Alkmaar.

$20 million doesn’t buy that much these days when it comes to Premier League soccer players, so if a similar fee can purchase almost any head coach a club desires, then spending the money on a head coach instead would be far more advantageous. The head coach might turn out to be a flop, but clubs sign $20 million players who flop all the time.

Brighton worked hard to bring in a strong backroom staff, but have since had sporting director Dan Ashworth poached by Newcastle United and Graham Potter and his coaching staff poached by Chelsea. The cost to Brighton if their replacements don’t work out will be far more than the fees they received in compensation.

De Zerbi might turn out to be an adequate replacement, but any new head coach is a risk and if he can’t replicate Potter’s results then Brighton will find themselves in a relegation battle and their players will lose value.

A great head coach can turn a $10 million player into a $50 million player, so investing $20 million in a head coach should be a no-brainer.

Sporting Clube de Portugal realized this when they spent around $15 million on rookie head coach Ruben Amorim. He led Sporting to their first league title in almost two decades, and the money the club got from playing in the UEFA Champions League, along with the more than $100 million they got in transfer fees this summer, more than paid for that initial $15 million outlay.

Clubs who feel that their head coach is one of their biggest assets should try look to increase the lengths of their contracts and put in higher release clauses.

This might cost the club money should they wish to sack the head coach when things are going badly, but it would at least mean they are less likely to lose their head coach to a bigger club just when things are starting to go well.