Former Chelsea manager hints at the two superstar signings he wanted to make

Former Chelsea manager Graham Potter has hinted his Stamford Bridge tenure may have panned out differently had the club allowed him to sign more experienced players.

After the shock sacking of Thomas Tuchel, Chelsea spent £21 million in order to prise Potter and his coaching staff from Brighton but dispensed with him after little more than six months following a wretched run of form.

The Clearlake consortium led by Todd Boehly had overseen a £300m spending spree the summer before Potter’s appointment which centred largely on recruiting young, promising players for around Europe.

Chelsea had also been linked with moves for senior England internationalsHarry Kane and Declan Rice and Potter believes the expectation of an instant return on the club’s investment was unfair given the type of players Chelsea recruited.

‘It was almost like the perfect storm,’ Potter told The Telegraph. ‘It was 14 matches in six weeks prior to the World Cup. It was like you were in the washing machine, that’s what we said within the staff, because the games kept coming and we had no preparation time or anything.

‘We lost Reece [James] and Wesley [Fofana] to injury. I think we had the most players at the World Cup and pretty quickly afterwards we lost Raheem [Sterling] and Christian Pulisic.

‘Then the ownership decided to invest a lot of money in the squad, £300 million in the January transfer window.

‘Now, if you are spending £300 million on players that are coming from outside the Premier League, from countries that are having a mid-season break, then the reality is you can’t just imagine they are going to hit the ground running and everything’s going to be fine.

‘But, obviously, if you spend £300 million, the pressure on the team goes up and the pressure on the coach goes up. And people go: ‘Come on then, you’ve spent all this money.’

‘I think if I’d have spent it on Harry Kane and Declan Rice, then fair enough, but at the time that was the decision. We tried to support it as best we could, but it left us with a challenge of a lot of players after January and then they can’t go anywhere.’