Potter's time at the Club | Supposed Exposé

[stubbo-admin]

This is doing the rounds and was posted by some guy that liked Potter on KUMB.  No idea the veracity, and a bit of a dry read, but is at least a little revealing.
----------------------------

This is going around some of the forums and WhatsApp groups today (KUMB etc). No source, but apparently comes from the Brady camp as opposed to Sullivan side.Make of it what you will, but it would explain some things.

---

Finally received some behind-the-scenes insight about my dawg Potters spell at the club during a long-awaited Skype call yesterday.

Not from himself mind you (I'd imagine The Graham may be slightly afraid of me), but from someone who knows a member of his staff really well and who have heard plenty - if not all - while meeting old friends during the Christmas holidays.Fascinating stuff. I'm going to be a bit vague here in terms of naming some names... for reasons.

There are people in the boardroom who feel that paying 90-100% of revenue in staff & player wages isn't sustainable. He/she/they were not pleased with appointing Julen Lopetegui, who had departed Wolverhampton due to a lack of investment.

Promising the manager a different story at West Ham made aforementioned board people unhappy as they felt that the investment opportunity from the Rice sale in 2023 should have been invested in facilities, academy and diversified assets (a.k.a. signing multiple young players rather than Kilman, Fullkrug etc).

However, other people in the West Ham boardroom have no long-term interest in the club and they care more about the immediate operational stability and that investing in ready-made players would "make sure" West Ham were able to reach European football (and the money that comes with it) every or nearly every year.

When it was clear Lopetegui would not bring West Ham to Europe, there was what you could call a change of majority opinion in the boardroom.

The new majority wanted Graham Potter due to his track record of performing with very limited funds and developing young players into highly valued assets in his previous clubs.Potter was told that he would oversee a process where West Ham cut 30% of player/staff wages to be finalised by the summer of 2026 and that results would not be the primary importance, everything apart from relegation would be acceptable.

A core part of this plan was to get rid of older players benefitting from the unsustainable wage structure and replace them with youngers players with lower demands and who could be resold in the future.Potter was also warned that the job would not be easy and that there were people strongly opposed to the concept as well as his appointment.

He was not to speak about the details of the process publicly, and that it would be benefical if he could appease to the opposed people through publicly displaying the attitude that West Ham is a "big club" rather than a "development club".

The parts above is what Graham Potter was told before getting the job. Below is what happened later...

The spring was a rocky road with some people in the club hierachy refusing to communicate with Potter and his staff. Especially one very central figure at West Ham, with limited interest in the mid- to long-term future of he club, was strongly opposed to all of these ideas and the appointment of a "process manager".

This central figure spoke with Potter no more than three times during his spell at the club.

In the summer, Potter was told that - as part of the wage restructuring - no one comes unless no one leaves. He was told he had a "zero budget", £0 to spend on wages and £0 to spend on transfers but that a percentage of every sale would be available in the war chest.

Potter was both annoyed and confused to hear this. "My job title says 'head coach', I'm here to coach and develop the players. My job is to work with people, not money."

He also said that he had already told the recruitment staff what kind of players he wanted and the positions where he felt he could need new players.This was not appreciated and a mutual feeling started to grow that this would not work out since there was no coherence from the upper hierachy.

The issues in different boardroom views that Potter had been told about were larger than expected.In terms of recruitment, Potter mainly had one wish and that was to make sure leaders in the dressing room were replaced by other experienced leading players, preferably British.

He was pleased with KWP and Wilson joining, two hard-working players who would be appreciated in any group. However, the former is very quiet and the latter someone who has decided he wants to be leader - not a natural.Regarding leadership in the dressing room, the initial plan was to ask Bowen if he wanted to step aside as captain to make sure he could focus on what he does best - scoring goals.

They had conversations and Bowen didn't mind the solution.However, as no vocal leader was brought in, Potter felt there was no real option. Other candidates like Kilman, Ward-Prowse, Wan-Bissaka, Walker-Peters and Wilson are ALL in the category "lead by example" rather than "lead with your voice". Just like Bowen. So instead of causing headlines with a swap that wouldn't matter, Bowen kept the armband.

Others like Areola and Soucek were considered but Potter had been told that these were likely to be sold.

At the end of the transfer window, very little had worked out as anyone wanted, with key signings coming in way too late, and a lot of glaring holes left in the squad. At this point, which was after the 3-0 loss to Sunderland, Graham Potter told the squad that they were in for a season long relegation battle and that were would be very difficult times, but that if they worked hard and developed together, they would make it in the end.

Somehow this manager-player meeting was reported to the boardroom, leading to a central West Ham figure confronting Potter and demanding that Potter gathered the players to tell them that West Ham is a big club and that losing a game is never acceptable.

Potter felt that this would cause too much pressure and blatantly refused. "Tell them yourself".

At this point Potter knew he was going to be sacked but still felt he "had the responsibility to help the group of players and a professional dignity and thus kept working as if he didn't know". Potter still had people protecting him in the boardroom, but was told that unless they started to win a lot, there would be people finding ways to create extra pressure and ridicule around him and that they were eventually going to have to "react to that".

[Eerie Decent]

I think maybe we're just a good target for bad owners.  From the poor part of London (but still London) big enough to be at the top table, but not so big that we're unobtainable or that you have to keep the Club at the very top...with a fan base to continually bail the club out.

We've never really had the owners who had any real desire for the Club to go on and be a truly big Club vying for the big prizes, but have the fan base to justify at least trying. 

Basically all our owners have been 'small time rich guys' for whom winning enough as opposed to winning outright suitably satisfied them.

To get to the very top, you need owners who are driven to want it ALL...where the prize is the Club winning, rather than the prize just being the Club itself.

Will we ever get that...who knows. But we've got a great club Anthem that petty much tells the whole story.

That's not true, the Icelandics certainly did have lofty ambitions, they just unfortunately were done by Global financial crash. Rank bad luck on our part.

The other thing that has gone against us, is that G&S took us over at a point when there were not a plethora of mega rich nations/companies looking to take over clubs. There were a couple that had done, Chelsea a long time before and Man City, but it wasn't the norm like it has been the last 10 years. And sadly for us, they both enjoyed being the owners of a big club, rather than having a properly ambitious plan with unlimited funds to do it, and they've wanted too much money to sell us, hence why no one has bought us. Why but West Ham for £900mil when you can buy Newcastle for a third of that?

As with a lot of things in life, timing and bad luck has done for us, on the owners front.

[Sir Alf]

Well said Stubbo. Sums it up very well. The song “Bubbles” started to be sung for a player with curly locks back in the pre or post WW2 era ( cant recall exactly when but according to my old grandad) and even then the fans appreciated the “gallows humour” of the lyrics.  The enduring culture at West Ham has been great potential, some nice football at times ( not Sullivan era), win a cup now and then ( much harder since TV and money became the primary driver of success ) but ultimately never to deliver or attempt to deliver on the full potential its fan base offers.  

[Matt Holmes]

In one of his pressers I remember Potter saying about yoof etc

”we’re not a development club…” 

rings true 

[stubbo-admin]

I think maybe we're just a good target for bad owners.  From the poor part of London (but still London) big enough to be at the top table, but not so big that we're unobtainable or that you have to keep the Club at the very top...with a fan base to continually bail the club out.

We've never really had the owners who had any real desire for the Club to go on and be a truly big Club vying for the big prizes, but have the fan base to justify at least trying. 

Basically all our owners have been 'small time rich guys' for whom winning enough as opposed to winning outright suitably satisfied them.

To get to the very top, you need owners who are driven to want it ALL...where the prize is the Club winning, rather than the prize just being the Club itself.

Will we ever get that...who knows. But we've got a great club Anthem that petty much tells the whole story.

[kylay]

Very interesting. Still loathe Potter mind, and neither he nor Loppy should have been appointed. What I take from that though, is something I have been banging on about for decades, and that is West Ham as a club has never known what they are; a small big club or the biggest small club. We always pay huge money for players who rarely give back what we pay for them, yet we let good, strong Premier League players who would suit us go off to play for clubs lower than us. I'm sorry to say it's not just about this Board either. It's been going on since the Cearns were in charge, and it's the one constant - other than me and other fans - in this whole constantly evolving mess.  

I refuse to believe there is something endemic to this club (a curse or whatever you want to call it) that prevents it from being successful. We've effectively only had 3 owners, the Cearns, Terry Brown, and the Dildo merchants. I know the Icelandic bankers had us for 2 years but that's not really enough time to make anything of it. I think it's far more likely we simply haven't had good owners, and american sports franchises are littered with examples of good owners turning teams around and bad owners plunging them into mediocrity. All circumstantial evidence we have of the current owners points to their incompetence, indifference or unwillingness to properly run the club. 

[Billy Blagg]

Very interesting. Still loathe Potter mind, and neither he nor Loppy should have been appointed. What I take from that though, is something I have been banging on about for decades, and that is West Ham as a club has never known what they are; a small big club or the biggest small club. We always pay huge money for players who rarely give back what we pay for them, yet we let good, strong Premier League players who would suit us go off to play for clubs lower than us. I'm sorry to say it's not just about this Board either. It's been going on since the Cearns were in charge, and it's the one constant - other than me and other fans - in this whole constantly evolving mess.  

[eusebiovic]

Kuntinsky can fuck off too the fucking dweeb looking cսnt. Anyone that presided over this shitshow shouldnt be allowed pets let alone run a fucking football club. Fucking cսnt flap. 

I initially thought he was biding his time and giving Sullivan enough rope to finally asphyxiate himself but now I'm not entirely convinced he is that Machiavellian...

Here's hoping

[Vexed]

Kuntinsky can fuck off too the fucking dweeb looking cսnt. Anyone that presided over this shitshow shouldnt be allowed pets let alone run a fucking football club. Fucking cսnt flap. 

[northbankfrank]

Kretinsky will be chairman sooner . Rather than later.  Dwarfs greed has fucked him . 

How's that going to happen? Is he going to meet Sullivan's valuation for his shares or has he reached an agreement with the Gold family for theirs?

[El Scorchio]

And calling the wife a fucking orca could be a rallying cry to get the corpulent bitch to drop some tonnage before she loses a limb to diabetes.

It's more likely to send her back to the trough until her heart explodes.

Could be, if you don't call her a fucking Orca. Sullivan is the one in this scenario who has gone and called the players the equivalent of a fucking Orca.

Potter called her an orca. Sullivan threw out the fresh veg and replaced it with pork scratchings.

No. In the above context Potter essentially said 'Things aren't where we want them to be but you can make the best of a bad situation.' Sullivan came down and told them they were all shit and a disgrace.

[THUNDERCLINT]

You could interpret it that the players would have known they were in for a fuck of a fight to survive after being slapped about by a promoted team, knowing that there were massive glaring holes al over the squad and investment over the last 12 months had been fucking abysmal or non existent and there was at that point no help coming, and it was more a rallying cry to already demoralised players that it was going to be tough but they could get through it if they pulled together. None of us were there so we don't know verbatim what was said.




 

And calling the wife a fucking orca could be a rallying cry to get the corpulent bitch to drop some tonnage before she loses a limb to diabetes.

It's more likely to send her back to the trough until her heart explodes.

Could be, if you don't call her a fucking Orca. Sullivan is the one in this scenario who has gone and called the players the equivalent of a fucking Orca.

Potter called her an orca. Sullivan threw out the fresh veg and replaced it with pork scratchings.

[El Scorchio]

You could interpret it that the players would have known they were in for a fuck of a fight to survive after being slapped about by a promoted team, knowing that there were massive glaring holes al over the squad and investment over the last 12 months had been fucking abysmal or non existent and there was at that point no help coming, and it was more a rallying cry to already demoralised players that it was going to be tough but they could get through it if they pulled together. None of us were there so we don't know verbatim what was said.



 

And calling the wife a fucking orca could be a rallying cry to get the corpulent bitch to drop some tonnage before she loses a limb to diabetes.

It's more likely to send her back to the trough until her heart explodes.

Could be, if you don't call her a fucking Orca. Sullivan is the one in this scenario who has gone and called the players the equivalent of a fucking Orca.

[THUNDERCLINT]

You could interpret it that the players would have known they were in for a fuck of a fight to survive after being slapped about by a promoted team, knowing that there were massive glaring holes al over the squad and investment over the last 12 months had been fucking abysmal or non existent and there was at that point no help coming, and it was more a rallying cry to already demoralised players that it was going to be tough but they could get through it if they pulled together. None of us were there so we don't know verbatim what was said.

 

And calling the wife a fucking orca could be a rallying cry to get the corpulent bitch to drop some tonnage before she loses a limb to diabetes.

It's more likely to send her back to the trough until her heart explodes.

[El Scorchio]

You could interpret it that the players would have known they were in for a fuck of a fight to survive after being slapped about by a promoted team, knowing that there were massive glaring holes al over the squad and investment over the last 12 months had been fucking abysmal or non existent and there was at that point no help coming, and it was more a rallying cry to already demoralised players that it was going to be tough but they could get through it if they pulled together. None of us were there so we don't know verbatim what was said.

However for the board to be at such odds with each other and for one to tell him expectations immediately were low and it was a long build, vs another saying it was unacceptable and it was all win win win now (with zero support from them) is fucking ridiculous. Not that Potter didn't dig his own grave with some of the things he did, but no manager is going to succeed when such crazy mixed orders are coming from above. Until the board have their house in order and agree on a clear strategy and put the right infrastructure in place, we're going to be trapped in this cycle of failure.

Sullivan has to go. It's especially wild of him to set those expectations for his managers without actually giving them anything like the means to do it, or using the money that would be their means to buy players he rather than they want.

[THUNDERCLINT]

As much as I dislike Potter (a lot) it's a bit unfair to dig him out about something he allegedly said behind closed doors. Maybe he actually said something more along the lines of we're in for a relegation fight if you continue to play like that. Of course he'd say it in such a tedious, mealy mouthed roundabout sort of way that you couldn't blame someone for not really listening properly. I know I tuned out whenever I heard him talking. 

Maybe when the wife asks "do I look fatin this?" one may think "of course you do you fucking orca" but saying it is of no benefit to anyone.

[Mad Ferret]

Kretinsky will be chairman sooner . Rather than later.  Dwarfs greed has fucked him . 

Dream on

[Pshyco scored all 4]

Kretinsky will be chairman sooner . Rather than later.  Dwarfs greed has fucked him . 

[Jean-Luc Paul Goddard]

As much as I dislike Potter (a lot) it's a bit unfair to dig him out about something he allegedly said behind closed doors. Maybe he actually said something more along the lines of we're in for a relegation fight if you continue to play like that. Of course he'd say it in such a tedious, mealy mouthed roundabout sort of way that you couldn't blame someone for not really listening properly. I know I tuned out whenever I heard him talking. 

[THUNDERCLINT]

No, that’s David Sullivan for running the club into the ground. Potter was a symptom of the whole fucking place. 

That a completely separate issue to Potter foolishly making that comment after one game.

If there’s no support from the board and the players aren’t sufficient to stay in the league, I make him right.

Besides, I'm not saying he wasn't right I'm saying he was a fucking idiot for articulating the thought.

[THUNDERCLINT]

No, that’s David Sullivan for running the club into the ground. Potter was a symptom of the whole fucking place. 

That a completely separate issue to Potter foolishly making that comment after one game.

If there’s no support from the board and the players aren’t sufficient to stay in the league, I make him right.

There should have been enough, even in this abortion of a squad, to finish 17th.

[kylay]

"Potter was told that he would oversee a process where West Ham cut 30% of player/staff wages to be finalised by the summer of 2026 and that results would not be the primary importance, everything apart from relegation would be acceptable"

This is lunacy and not possible unless you want to compete in the championship. It does feel as though it's all becoming a bit unglued with the board. 

[Pub Bigot]

Or he's responsible for initiating the self-fulfilling prophecy. Fucking A-Level psychology at best.

No, that’s David Sullivan for running the club into the ground. Potter was a symptom of the whole fucking place. 

That a completely separate issue to Potter foolishly making that comment after one game.

If there’s no support from the board and the players aren’t sufficient to stay in the league, I make him right.

[THUNDERCLINT]

Urm, he's been provided right so far.

Or he's responsible for initiating the self-fulfilling prophecy. Fucking A-Level psychology at best.

No, that’s David Sullivan for running the club into the ground. Potter was a symptom of the whole fucking place. 

That a completely separate issue to Potter foolishly making that comment after one game.

[Pub Bigot]

Telling the players to expect a season long relegation battle after ONE game and cock piss is meant to be  master of sports psychology?

Stupid cսnt. No wonder morale is on the floor.

Overall though sounds like there's a clear split in the boardroom. I 'd guess Brady, Cretin and the Golds against the Sullicunt.



 

Urm, he's been provided right so far.

Or he's responsible for initiating the self-fulfilling prophecy. Fucking A-Level psychology at best.

No, that’s David Sullivan for running the club into the ground. Potter was a symptom of the whole fucking place. 

[THUNDERCLINT]

Telling the players to expect a season long relegation battle after ONE game and cock piss is meant to be  master of sports psychology?

Stupid cսnt. No wonder morale is on the floor.

Overall though sounds like there's a clear split in the boardroom. I 'd guess Brady, Cretin and the Golds against the Sullicunt.


 

Urm, he's been provided right so far.

Or he's responsible for initiating the self-fulfilling prophecy. Fucking A-Level psychology at best.