Jamie Carragher has claimed that Graham Potter will be under increased pressure to deliver success at Chelsea following the club’s significant spending spree.
Chelsea spent over £300million in the January transfer window, with deals being struck for Enzo Fernandez, Noni Madueke, Mykhailo Mudryk, Benoit Badiashile, David Datro Fofana, Andrey Santos and Malo Gusto.
Carragher feels that with such significant investment from owner Todd Boehly, Chelsea will be looking to win the Premier League next season.
Former Liverpool defender Carragher feels that Potter will have limited time to turn Chelsea into title contenders.
Speaking on Sky Sports, Carragher said: “I think it makes it tougher. I think the reason you bring in Graham Potter is because he builds a club that’s his history in management and that’s why they’ve brought him in. But it feels like what they’ve done in the transfer market is the opposite of that.
‘There’s no right or wrong way of doing things, we’ve seen Chelsea in the past under Abramovich bringing lots of players in, changing managers all the time, but I don’t think that bodes well for Potter in the future in terms of the amount of money they’ve sent and players they’ve brought in. Because that’s pressure.
‘The start of next season, with that kind of outlay – and they’ll go again in the summer – you’ve got to win the league or go close and that ramps up the pressure for the manager.’
Carragher also stressed the difficulties that Potter will have in attempting to get his methods across to a constantly changing squad.
Potter will also have to deal with players being disappointed at being left out, with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, for instance, having been omitted from the club’s Europa League squad.
Carragher said: ‘The philosophy might have to be to build again. He’ll be trying to get his methods across to a completely different group of players and now even more players that have come in.
‘It’s interesting because with every Chelsea manager, there’s been that question of who’s really in charge here of bringing the players in. He’s been quite vocal in press conferences before games that he’s a coach, and he’s thinking about tomorrow’s training.
‘From the press conferences, he’s a really level-headed character, he speaks about being not too high or not too low and he said he wasn’t too nervous on deadline day getting the Fernandez deal over the line, because he was thinking about training, that was someone else’s job.
‘But they’ve got the recruitment team in there, who at Brighton were bringing players in for the future, and the players Chelsea are bringing are young. But when you get to this level and the figures we’re talking about it’s about the here and now.’
Chelsea went into Friday’s game at home to Fulham in tenth place having endured an inconsistent first half of the season.
Potter now has an array of talented players at his disposal, but it remains to be seen whether he will be able to get them playing cohesively together.
Chelsea have a Champions League tie against Borussia Dortmund coming up and it will be intriguing to see how they fare in that competition.
During his previous job at Brighton Potter was widely praised for his work, but he is unlikely to be afforded lots of time to make an impact at Chelsea.