Head Coach Graham Potter is the very special guest on the official West Ham United pod cast, Iron Cast!
Potter sat down with hosts Chris Scull and James Collins at London Stadium this week to chat all things Claret and Blue.
The 49-year-old talked about how ‘proud’ and ‘privileged’ he feels to be managing a ‘massive club with a family feel’ and how he feels responsibility to the history and tradition of a Club which was originally formed 130 years ago.
“There is an aura about the Club, I think,” said Potter. “I think it’s a massive Club, but it’s still got a family feel as well. I think that’s what struck me at the Club.
“You can see the supporters are so passionate. They’re so loyal. There’s a desire to have a real connection to the team as well. It feels like they’re quite close to you.
“I feel really proud is the truth. I’ve got a responsibility because of the history and the tradition and the ambition of the Club, but I know how lucky and fortunate and privileged I am as well, so I have to take both things.”
Potter revealed that he has already felt the size of West Ham, even around his family home in Hove on the Sussex coast.
“My family is still in Hove, Brighton, and there are West Ham fans there as well that are coming out saying ‘I’m a West Ham fan. Good luck!’, so you realise how big it is, how big the club is, for sure, and that’s exciting. That’s really exciting.
“Whenever I’ve gone out, you can sense the community. It’s part of the fabric of everywhere and it’s going to be nice to experience more and more, I think.
“The support has been amazing from the supporters to the staff to the players. Everyone has been really supportive and there is a feeling that we want to do something, and that’s one of the attractions here.
“I think there’s a connection that needs to be made. There’s an identity that can be built, and I think that’s really, really exciting from my perspective.”
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE
Potter talked about his ‘hectic’ first week in charge, which saw the Hammers play three times in eight days, and getting to know his playing squad.
“I think there is a sense of positivity,” he observed. “I definitely sense the players are buying in and they’re engaged, I definitely get that.
“I think the supporters have been unbelievable to us in terms of how they’ve got beyond the team in the games that played since we’ve been here.
“At Chelsea the other night, the support recognised a spirited team performance. It wasn’t perfect and, again, not probably where they want to be long-term, but certainly from a direction or a team looking like they’re on the same page fighting for each other, I think that was in a good place.”
Next, Potter talked about the different dynamics and circumstances which will dictate how long it will take for his philosophy and playing style will take shape.
“You can’t just click your fingers and all of a sudden that changes,” he explained. ”So, there’s lots of things, but I think you start with whatever my ideal of it is, it’s important that you don’t go to it too quickly. You’ve got to understand where the reality of it is now and, step-by-step-by-step-by-step-by-step, build towards where we all want it to be, which is an attacking, possession-based football team that is aggressive when we don’t have the ball, because I think the supporters want to see that as well.
“As much as they want to see attractive football, there’s a desire to see an intensity and a desire to try to get the ball back as quickly as we can [when we don’t have possession]. But again, it’s step-by-step, otherwise you go there too quickly and things can get messy.”
The next topic of conversation is Potter’s longstanding relationship with Kyle Macaulay, who he first worked with at Östersunds FK in Sweden in 2012, and has taken with him to Swansea City, Brighton & Hove Albion and Chelsea, and has now appointed as Head of Recruitment at West Ham.
Speaking of Östersunds, Potter told Scull and Collins about his unique career path after his playing career ended in the mid-2000s, explaining how he completed a Masters degree in leadership and personal and professional development and began coaching students at Leeds Metropolitan University.
Central to Potter’s thinking is removing a ‘fear and blame’ of making mistakes from his clubs and his dressing rooms, instead instilling a healthy ‘high performance culture’ where players embrace their responsibilities and deal with the pressure they are under positively.
“The interesting thing about that was not necessarily the course itself, although the course was great, it was the people that were on it,” he recalled. There were surgeons, there were people from the military, special forces. So, while there is an old saying people say that football is more important than life and death and that type of thing, actually these were people that were in life and death situations and it’s about how you dealt with failure, how you dealt with the stressful situations.
“My experience in football was quite ‘fear and blame’ and I’m thinking ‘Oh, that’s quite interesting, how in surgery, when somebody makes a mistake, you can’t be pointing fingers and blaming people. You’ve got to be able to deal with the mistake and recover it, and so that was really interesting.
“I suppose that five-year period left me with loads of studying and theory around how to put my experiences in context. I could theorise my playing experiences. I could understand about leadership. I could understand self-regulation, self-awareness, empathy, all those things.
“And I’d also been practising practically about what my training sessions would look like, how I could influence players and what type of sessions they enjoy and all that stuff. So, at the point when I arrived in Sweden, even though it was the fourth tier of Swedish football, I had quite a lot of ideas because of that five-year period.
“Then you just go into more practical experience of being a football manager at a club.
“Ultimately the job of the Head Coach is to say ‘OK, well, how can we create the clarity at a team level so that everybody within the team knows their own responsibilities within the team, because as soon as there’s not that clarity, all of a sudden players have got excuses and you can’t hold people as accountable as you’d like.”
Part of Potter’s coaching has been based around the idea of ‘holistic development’, which he first practiced at Östersunds following a suggestion from director of football Daniel Kindberg, which saw players and staff perform in plays, write books, sing and dance.
“It was a genius idea, but it wasn’t mine!” Potter smiled.
Speaking of performing arts, the Head Coach was then asked for his favourite musical artists, revealing he has ‘got into Taylor Swift’, and is a fan of Sam Fender, who will play a concert at London Stadium this summer!
Returning to football, Potter spoke positively about the loan signing of his former Brighton striker Evan Ferguson, and the return of the experienced James Ward-Prowse to the squad from his own loan spell at Nottingham Forest.
And the Head Coach also talked enthusiastically about the Academy of Football, having given opportunities to Ollie Scarles and Lewis Orford in recent games, and named Kaelan Casey in his matchday squad.
“I’ve been impressed by what I’ve seen, and by the people in the Academy, you can see there is a real passion, expertise and quality there which means the players are enjoying their football and showing what they can do,” he confirmed.
“Then it’s obviously our job to make sure the pathways are there so that if we think the players can be Premier League players, there is an opportunity for them to show that pathway.
“We’re looking forward to working with them more and more. It’s an important part of the Club and it’s always something we’ve seen as important in developing a club.
“You’ve got to look externally to improve your team but you’ve also got to be aware of what you’ve got in the building and how you can develop them from Under-18s to Under-21s to Under-23s to time in the first team to being regular Premier League players, and it’s something we want to do.
“At the same time, we are ambitious, we want to win, and we want to make sure we’re competitive in the Premier League, which is the hardest league in the world.”
Potter closed his Iron Cast appearance by stating his short and medium-term hopes and ambitions for the Club.
“My head is always on preparing the team as best we can for the next match, and that should always be the start point,” he explained. “We can talk about transition periods and free hits and all this sort of stuff, but it’s not.
“We’re at a big, ambitious club which wants to win football matches, so I have to think about preparing the team as best we to win the next match. That’s about putting in the foundations about how we’re going to act, the roles of the team and individuals, and trying to develop the playing style and get as many points as we can.
“Like I said, we’re far from where we want to be, but we have to go there step-by-step by training, playing games, making mistakes, winning, losing, drawing, analysing how we can improve, and improving the squad.
“My ambition is to stay like that this season and get as many points as we can, then all that time is information about what we need to do in the summer to take us on again.
“We’re at the start. We have a way of playing we want to get towards and I think it fits with how the supporters want to see the game, but we’ve got work to do to get there.”
