Chelsea boss Graham Potter made to look foolish after transfer window

Chelsea boss Graham Potter has been made to look foolish by comments he made about the number of signings the Blues would look to make in the transfer window. The Englishman warned the club could not just bring in a host of players as it would leave him with too big a squad to work with, something that has now come into fruition with the arrival of Enzo Fernandez bringing their January additions to eight. 

Chelsea have raised eyebrows over the course of the January transfer window after spending lavishly across the month. The club have parted with £291million to bring in eight new faces with their expenditure over five times that of the next biggest spenders Southampton.

However, the west Londoners spending has reflected badly on boss Potter with the former Brighton coach left red-faced by comments he made earlier in the window. The 47-year-old warned against over signing something that did not end up happening given the sheer number of arrivals.

“We want to play better,” he told reporters after Chelsea’s 1-0 win over Crystal Palace last month. “We want more wins. You need a squad that’s balanced. You need a squad that’s got the right amount of competition.

“We’ve got to be, not necessarily careful, but you’ve got to understand we’ve got 10 or 11 players unavailable and you can’t just sign players to replace those because then you’d have a squad of 30 and that is a problem.”

There is also the problem of Champions League registration with just three of the new boys able to be registered for the competition. Enzo Fernandez is a certainty given his English record fee while it would also be a reasonable bet to expect Myhaylo Mudryk to be involved. 

That leaves Joao Felix and Beniot Badiashile fighting over the final two places with Noni Madueke, Andrey Santos and David Datro Fofana likely to miss out. 

It remains to be seen how Potter will deal with his huge squad but his previous comments suggest it is not a situation he is looking forward to addressing.