FOR ALL his management-speak language and polished press conferences, Graham Potter had huge limitations as a coach who failed first at Chelsea and then at West Ham United.
The Hammers came to Potter after Lopetegui’s chaotic six months, hoping for an end to player- coach bust-ups and the Spaniard’s knee jerk reactions on the pitch. What they got was a committee man who couldn’t unite or lead a squad successfully, managing only two home wins in his nine month tenure.
Emerson Palmieri reflected on his West Ham exit, as reported today by getfootballnewsitaly.com.
Remember, here was a player who had won every domestic and European trophy there is. Bar none. And yet Potter took against the Brazilian – Italian and eventually isolated him from the squad completely:
“Before the transfer, I spent 50 days training alone. West Ham wouldn’t lower their demands, but I kept calm because I knew Marseille were there.
Emerson was so low that his brother had to travel from Brazil to support him: “My brother’s presence; he came from Brazil to London to be with me. And when Marseille came forward, he immediately advised me to accept because it would be a unique experience.”
Pottter, it seems, like Lopetegui before him, managed to fall out with players and isolate them from the squad. For what reason, we’ll never know. One of the strangest PR videos of the summer was the Callum Wilson ‘reveal’ showing the new Hammer being shown around Rush Green whilst the main squad was away, with a deserted gym occupied solely by a lonely looking Emerson.
The left back is now determined to regain his place in the Italian national side. Good for him: Somehow it shouldn’t have ended like that.
The sad part of this is … that West Ham board, even Mark Noble let this happen without intervention. How pathetic?
No player should be treated like this, nowhere!
also the backroom staff, his coaches, what are they doing?
Being yes men to their boss Graham Potter. Or maybe it was the other way around.
The bloke has admittedly had an odd career. For someone that has won every European club honour and a euro champs medal. West Ham was his first club on joining us at the age of 28 where he was able to string together anything more than 35 appearances. Up until this point he’d averaged just 11 matches per season throughout his career before West Ham, yet managed to win 3 major European trophies and only play in one of the finals.
Admittedly I quite liked him but ultimately yet another player that had managed to grow old within our squad.
All sounds a bit harsh, but have to admit I agree and that very quickly became disillusioned with GP from last season on as thought it was a bad sign that could not get the team to fight for each other or play together, even if not his squad. it was total incompetence and that was only the beginning. Never believed difficulty learning a system. The academy teaches systems, Emerson has played under plenty of managers & various systems for example; nothing people were saying as to reasons why, made any sense.
I have never seen anything like it – season 25-26 it was like watching somebody out on a lake, busy making holes in his own boat. Everything was so erratic I was actually concerned for his mental health especially after his pitch side performances.
Emerson depressed and training on his own because don’t fancy him as a player – it just gets stranger and stranger and stranger.
I wish potter had stayed away from the team for months as we might have won a few matches and actually seen some entertainment
I wonder if the two of them had previous at Chelsea, like JWP and Nuno at Forest?
Another slow ageing has been who was quite rightly shown the door.
At some point, I began to get the feeling that Potter had great difficulty dealing with senior players and players of personality within our squad and was probably better suited to managing young academy-level players.
At the time, I couldn’t quite figure out why Emerson had become isolated from the rest of the squad, as he had so much to offer us.
When you read stuff like this, it just confirms how out of his depth Potter was.
Not for £1m to boot either