Just in case we do get a Manager any time soon, and it is Mr Potter, I thought I'd give a brief overview of his performance as a manager in his career.
First of all his overall performance is as follows:
1. He was appointed to his first Managerial role by Ostersunds on 24 January 2011. He has been their manager for over 7 1/3 years.
2. He has managed a total of 224 matches and his W/D/L statistics are 109/56/59, which means he has a win ratio of 48.7% and more importantly a points per match result of 1.71 These are very impressive results over a set of 224 matches, and places his potential clearly in the RM and BR category.
3. His teams are attacking and on average score 0.48 more goals than they concede 1.62 v 1.14. Over his managerial career his team has therefore a positive goal difference of approx +108.
4. He favours a number of formations and has trained his teams to be able to effectively switch formations in mid match. His most popular formation is the 4-4-2 double 6. This is an extremely flexible formation and has a number of variants which are akin to formations we have played under BR. Over the past few years we have often struggled against teams who effectively play this formation.
5. The key elements are the formation from a player perspective are:
A. Two strong centre backs who can pass well.
B. Two fullbacks, with strong engines and who can be adventurous in getting up the field and overlapping. They need to be able to cross well. The width of the basic formation comes from the full backs, It is narrow without the right type of fullback.
C. In the basic formation 2 holding midfielders ( can be one in some variants ) who tend to control the pitch and initiate the game plan.
D. Two more attacking midfielders, who tend to play narrow and support the two forwards. One tends to be more creative and in some varuants acts as a narrow winger and the other a ball winning box to box midfielder. Often the formation has problems without a quality ball winning box to box player.
E. Two quick dynamic forwards, not a traditional target man.
There are multiple variants depending on the players available and the width or narrowness to be played.
6. There is clear focus on developing the players not only into better players but also better decision makers and more confident individuals.
7. He has never had much money to spend and has often had to make do and be very effective in the scouting department, looking for value and players that other teams don't value.
8. He took over the club when it was in dire straits in all areas and in the bottom tier of the Swedish league.
9. He won promotion into the second tier in his first year as champions. They were promoted to the Swedish Premier League in their third season in second place.
10. Mr Potter has been manager of the year for two seasons in a row in the Swedish Premier League.
11. Ostersunds won the Swedish Cup in 2016/17.
Mr Potter has demonstrated sustained performance over a very long period, if that performance was replicated in the Championship it would generate a total of 78/79 points and a goal difference of +22/23. Very strong play off candidate material.
I will I'll provide some more statistics on his first season and the 2016/17 season next time.