Would you take Graham Potter at United?

Would you take Graham Potter at United?

  • Yes

    Votes: 474 56.4%

  • No

    Votes: 366 43.6%
  • Total voters
    840
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Dietmar Hopp has ploughed a estimated €350m into Hoffenheim and it's due to his wealth that the club was able to climb out of the lowest tiers of the German league. Fans in Germany have a disdain for Hoffenheim and call the club plastic, due to Hopp's wealth making the club relevant.
 
Not disparaging Nagelmann because he has obviously done good work and it's particularly impressive starting as head coach at 28. But even at Hoffenheim he took over a team in trouble near the bottom of the Bundesliga; but that side had finished top half the previous season. He went on to finish 4th, 3rd & 9th so decent work and a clear improvement.

Then a couple of 3rd places and a 2nd place with Leipzig. The clear highlight being CL semi finals.

The point being that being an exciting young coach as Nagelsmann ignored the fact he is missing many of the credentials fans of Utd want in our next manager. Nagelsmann exceeded expectations at Hoffenheim and by and large met them at Leipzig. He had no trophies to his name before Bayern took a chance on him. He was basically Pochettino at Spurs before that went sour.

We have to identify a manager who can take the next step in their career. This is why Erik Ten Hag & Graham Potter have been talked about so much. Thye have both shown levels of performance that exceed what could be reasonably be expected of their respective clubs.
 
I think Graham Potter would be an inspired choice as long as you gave him time to sort out the deadwood
 
What sort of step up or stepping stone are people looking for Potter to take? Like take the Villa job or something?

He appears to be an excellent coach, improved all the teams he has managed and has some experienced coaches working alongside him.

After Ten Hag, he'd be my 2nd choice. Knowing our luck we'll end up with Southgate and Potter will take the England job.
 
sparx99 said:
He was the coach of Leipzig when he was 3rd place UEFA coach of the year. He won 3rd place because he got to the CL semi finals manging Leipzig. He left Hoffenheim at the end of the 2018/19 season to take over Leipzig.
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That's true. I thought you were referring to when he first made an impression. Rather than that
 
EdinburghDevil said:
What sort of step up or stepping stone are people looking for Potter to take? Like take the Villa job or something?

He appears to be an excellent coach, improved all the teams he has managed and has some experienced coaches working alongside him.

After Ten Hag, he'd be my 2nd choice. Knowing our luck we'll end up with Southgate and Potter will take the England job.
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I honestly can’t think of a manager that has taken the so called ‘step up’ and the gone on to greatness. I guess you could argue that Klopp and Nagelsmann maybe qualify but that’s a bit unfair to Dortmund and Leipzig are more of a sugar daddy club so again not like going from minnow to mid table to top tier.

Does Mourinho count? He went from U.D. Leiria to Porto to Chelsea. Porto isn’t dissimilar to Ten Hag managing Ajax. Obviously Jose won the CL at Porto and a treble but he also had a special group of players there. Considering how much more too heavy football has become Ten Hag’s CL semi final isn’t dissimilar.

Moyes when he got the Utd had done the whole Preston > Everton > Utd journey albeit without a trophy but tangible ‘success’.

Roberto Martinez won an FA Cup with Wigan and has done ok with Belgium. Is he good enough? I’m not at all convinced he’s a good manager but he’s won a trophy.

It’s strange isn’t it because if/when Pochettino wins Ligue Un this season he’ll shed his no trophy stigma and a bunch of people will then think he’s viable.

I’m much more interested in what Potter or other candidates can point to it terms of style of play and coaching than outright achievements. Potter could be well be the next English coach to win the CL. We’ll never know if one of the big English clubs don’t give him a chance.
 
EdinburghDevil said:
What sort of step up or stepping stone are people looking for Potter to take? Like take the Villa job or something?

He appears to be an excellent coach, improved all the teams he has managed and has some experienced coaches working alongside him.

After Ten Hag, he'd be my 2nd choice. Knowing our luck we'll end up with Southgate and Potter will take the England job.
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Generally speaking I think his next step would normally be a Leicester-level club. If we end up going for Rodgers (which I hope we don't) then he might be on their replacement list.

However, in a situation where we were short on options or our first choices aren't available then I think it's valid to go for a talented young manager at an earlier point in their career than you ideally would. It would be akin to going for Pochettino when he was at Southampton rather than waiting until after he did a job at Spurs. It's not something a top club would ideally do but it would be an understandable risk to take if you think he fits the profile for your club.

Part of the trade-off of having an idea of the manager you want that excludes people like Conte is that you might have to go for managers who do fit that profile before they've proven themselves as much as you would want in a perfect world.

One thing we sometimes ignore when we talk about manager options is that the club do actually get to interview prospective managers before making a decision. In the case of someone like Potter, if I was in charge of picking the manager (god forbid) then he would probably shift between my 2nd/3rd/4th choice depending on that discussion. I would already be pretty confident that he's a very good coach and that personality-wise he'd be good to work with but I'd want to get a sense that he knows exactly what he would do with the team (both short-term and long-term) and that he might actually be able to handle the step up.
 
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