HAPPY POTTER
After managing near the Arctic Circle, the Swansea boss is weaving his magic to cast a spell on Guardiola
‘At -18 the balls freeze, you’re playing with cannon balls’
GRAHAM POTTER is in his office, zigzagging through memories from Hull to Ghana to Leeds to Sweden to Swansea.
It is the travel-log of a marvellously unconventional career and also the reason why he offers a delightful perspective on the subject of managerial problem-solving.
In time he will come to the issues of his modern world, where he has somehow kept the Swans going in league and cup despite what might be termed as a royal plucking from those in charge.
But before any of that, he rewinds nine years to his final game as a player, aged 34, and one of his early assignments as a manager at Leeds Metropolitan University. ‘Those were interesting days,’ he says. ‘I remember we used to have our sessions on a Monday and a Thursday, but Wednesday was the main athletic union night out, so you would get a few of the lads turning up worse for wear. Suddenly you are adjusting training plans to deal with hangovers.
‘Then you have to factor in term times, because the football season continues even when the students aren’t there and you are begging people to play on a Saturday.
‘That’s how my last game as a player came about. I had to register myself against Tadcaster Albion to be on the bench.’
It’s a charming aspect of Potter’s trip on a road less travelled that he has acquired stories less often heard. Take another one from Ostersunds, in Sweden, where he rocked up in 2010 before leaving for Swansea last year after three promotions. The challenge, aside from landing at a foreign club with barely 500 match-going supporters, was the weather. It would regularly drop to -25°C.
‘In January you would have to train indoors but even in February, when we went outdoors, it would be -20 sometimes,’ he says. ‘We would just about set a limit on -18 as the cut-off. One of the things with that is the balls freeze.
‘We had this session at -18 and every 20 minutes we had to change the balls because they were becoming like cannon balls. I’ll never forget — the boys were sweating and it was freezing on their faces and they had icicles forming on their eyebrows and coming down. They were snapping eyelashes off.’
And that, really, is the point. Surroundings. Challenges. Adaptation. If the surroundings change, the rules of the other two still stand. Which brings us back to Swansea and what has played out between May, when they fell out of the Premier League after seven years, and now, when they step back into the limelight for an FA Cup quarter-final against Manchester City on Saturday.
In that time, the club’s American ownership of Steve Kaplan and Jason Levien made one of their few popular decisions with the appointment of Potter in June, but much of the rest of their reign since 2016 has brought questions, many of which involve the nature of the takeover and the decimation of the squad since relegation.
On that latter score, 16 senior players have left and five have come in across two transfer windows. The morning after the August deadline, they had one senior centre half left after offloading two. The Americans have cited the ‘hard medicine’ of post-relegation finances, but the fans make a more compelling case in wondering if sale after sale after sale is the only way to survive.
In all of this, it is tempting to wonder if Potter was sold a pup when he came over. But he has only ever presented a dignified face, while staying afloat with the youngest squad in the Championship. In the bottom half, it might not look much, but the consensus is that he is punching above his weight.
Fans wonder what he might build if he didn’t have his hands tied. But he doesn’t complain. Asked if the club is as he expected, he says: ‘I would say yes and no. Nobody told me any lies or misled me.
‘The club lost its way a bit and tried to recoup or gamble to stay in the Premier League. The reality is when you are not there you are faced with a significant challenge.
‘If you look to this period of Swansea’s history, I would say it is not a very positive one, but at the same time it is a really important one, because if it is not handled well then I think it can carry on in a downward path.’
Potter insists he is still ‘very much enjoying’ the job, which follows a post-playing career that took in roles with university sides in Hull and Leeds, a degree in social sciences, masters in leadership, a job coaching the Ghana women’s team, and fame for doing the improbable when he was 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle.
That will grow if Swansea rattle Manchester City. A massive ‘if’, of course. ‘They are a brilliant team and Pep Guardiola is a brilliant manager,’ says Potter. ‘Let’s see what we can do. It’s a challenge.’
Not quite the same as heading cannon balls, but yes, it is.