Top 25 Graham Potter Quotes

Educating players and being part of the community are very important.

I was only picking up short-term contracts in the lower leagues. I thought that rather than the game kick me out, I’d be proactive about it.

Ostersund has marketed itself as a winter city. But that’s changing now, with the success of the football team.

Players are fundamentally the same – regardless of what they earn. They want to improve and want to be part of something.

We want to help the players be more comfortable in their own skin, a bit braver, a bit more aware and more understanding of each other.

But any squad needs players who are hungry to do well, with their careers ahead of them. That’s important for the dynamic of the group, but it also needs a balance of guys who have seen it, done it and have that quality of leadership. It is all about the quality of the player.

The competition that is the Premier League is the biggest challenge in itself. It’s my job to get the players to believe that they can go in to every match and win.

But the concept that it’s important to understand the individual and the person, as well as the footballer, is a helpful concept, regardless of the competition.

They’re human beings before they’re footballers and it’s important to understand how can I help them. What do they need? How can they feel part of this? How can they feel they’re improving in their career, because my job is to help them get better, play better football, earn a better contract, whatever it is.

Whenever you start a new job, it’s always a bit daunting, the unknown.

Without those experiences in higher education I wouldn’t have been able to do this job. It taught me a more holistic approach and prepared me for the experience of working abroad, where your cultural beliefs are challenged and, sometimes, turned on their head.

But concepts around how a team functions, the importance of the relationship between football and the person, how you develop both, are always valid.

I needed to learn to be a coach initially. I think if I’d gone into professional football when I stopped playing when I was 30 years old I’d have failed because I’d have made too many mistakes because I had no real idea at that time.

I can’t sing, I can’t dance, I can’t do much else to be honest.

You have to respect and understand the environment. So I don’t think it’s a case of taking anything from Ostersund and transferring it to somewhere else.

I played football because I loved the game – but I didn’t enjoy the focus on not making mistakes and the culture being essentially one of blame and a little fear.

If you identify those guys – something we have done in the past – who are not as valued in the current market for whatever reason and you look to get them to play at a higher level than where they have come from. That’s how you develop the team.

At Ostersunds, we had half the players who were part-time and working and the other half were full-time.

We try and play football in a positive way. Any team has to be defensively organised, but you have to look at the attributes of the players and play to their strengths.

When it is 1-0 and you have been dominant and you have restricted the home team to pretty much nothing, if you do not score the second goal then that is football. Any action can happen in the game.

I was obviously never good enough to play at a top level, or even anywhere close to that, if I’m being honest. That’s the reality.

I’d read a classics book on the bus when I was at York.

I was used to football supporters hammering me and I thought my name was Graham Potter-Boo at one point.

People think that coaching is about winning football matches – which, of course, it is – but throughout my career it has also been about helping people become better, more able to deal with life and be more successful in their lives, on and off the football pitch.

My playing career that was a bit up but mostly down. I played in the Premier League at Southampton but most of my career was in the lower divisions.